This week, I have been in Rotterdam, Netherlands attending and making a presentation at a protein conference. The attendees were mostly from European food companies and also included some animal production companies. I was tasked with speaking about the growing demand in China for soybeans, corn and other commodities as well as the impact that future demand may have on the availability in Europe and elsewhere.It is clear from my discussions with several attendees that the enormous past and likely future growth in Chinese demand is causing more than a bit of unease in Europe. This is understandable. 11 years ago, the EU was by far the world's largest importer of soybeans and the largest consumer of soymeal. Today, its soybean imports are o...
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 €...
Key Takeaways: The tariff burden rose sharply in 2025 and 2026: the effective rate on imports in HTS Chapters 1–24 increased from 1.53 percent in 2024 to 6.11 percent in 2025, before averaging 5.68 percent in January–August 2026. Headline rates tell only part of the story: exemptio...
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.