Budget Proposal Flaws: Like all budget proposals from various presidents, the Obama Administration's proposed FY 2014 spending request reflects a political document with little likelihood of congressional enactment. Cuts in crop insurance subsidies, user fees to boost CFTC staffing and other ideas face stiff opposition. The Administration requests a 9 percent boost in money for the Office of the Secretary at USDA, which would mean a 20 percent total increase since 2012. Illustrating there are no new ideas, just the recycling of past failures, it requests the creation of a USDA Chief Evaluation Officer. The laudable objective is for this officer to "support evidence-based policymaking" -- a rarity in Washington, both in the past and the fu...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
Key Takeaways: WPI’s new EU rapeseed crushing margin models point to weaker processing returns over the next four months due to higher rapeseed procurement costs and weaker product values. Statistical forecasts call for German crushing margins to decline from €181/MT to €...
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.