It was the hope of most aggies late last year that the farm bill would be passed out of the House Agriculture Committee this month with floor time scheduled in March, which would pave the way for Senate consideration later in the spring. However, it currently seems very unlikely that the committee will pass a bill this month as the timing is unsure for Congress to complete action on a budget. The continuing resolution (CR) extending the deadline for federal spending authority or adopting a new appropriations plan for the rest of FY 2018 expires 19 January, but the odds are favorable that another stopgap will be passed. Whether a temporary extension or a final bill, whatever passes would be the fourth spending plan approved in five months...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.