Beijing could have easily foreseen the error in its farm policy had it just looked at the European and American experiences with guaranteeing high prices to farmers. Food Tribe Gullibles Nobel economists Robert Shiller and Roger Akerloff have a new book entitled Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, which basically declares the average consumer so inept that bad actors in the market easily play them for the fools they are. In short, they don't know the meaning of caveat emptor. Food editor Jenna Blumenfield interprets things differently, arguing that the Paleo, gluten-free Freegans of the world are an important source of innovation as their passion influences others. The problem is that no one, including govern...
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.