Farm Policy Next week is China’s annual ‘Two Sessions’ (the People’s Congress plus a consultative body) where Beijing releases its next Five-Year Plan. It has already released its 15th Five-Year Plan for agriculture. It reflects the nation’s evolution from a developing country desperate for calories to a rich country envisioning smart agriculture and resource-efficient production. This includes integrating technology to overcome resource limits and produce more and higher-quality food along a more sophisticated supply chain. Trump Tariffs The soybean futures market wobbled over doubts about whether the Chinese would buy more U.S. soybeans without the threat of IEEPA tariffs to bind them to current agreements. B...
Key Takeaways: World prices are strong; U.S. grower data doesn’t show it. Australia's benchmark finished the 2025/26 season 61 percent higher, while the value of the 2025 U.S. clip fell 7 percent. The U.S. clip is coarser than the wool behind the headlines. Only about 7 percent was finer...
Key Takeaways: The recent pullback in crude oil and other energy markets has left many in the ag and biofuels communities wondering what it means for ethanol and biodiesel prices and profit margins. WPI’s research indicates a weak but still significant link between ethanol and crud...
Key Takeaways: Alabama and Louisiana have requested partial waivers of 2027 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requirements, arguing that rising compliance costs are contributing to higher fuel prices and economic hardship. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is encouraging neighboring states to join th...
Congress is back in session for the lame-duck period, which is beginning with several contentious issues, including the farm bill, a federal funding deadline, energy legislation, and impeachment proceedings against Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War. Emblematic of the political uncertainty, the...
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.