According to a recent Federal Reserve report, prices were below breakeven for a number of commodities in the Corn Belt. It also indicates that credit conditions have deteriorated in several areas of the country, and yet demand for loans remains steady. This has increased the applications for USDA loan guarantees.Although prices for a number of commodities have increased recently, those for most crop and animal product remain below their levels of a year earlier, keeping financial pressure on producers. According to the latest Federal Reserve Beige Book on economic conditions (released 1 June and based on data prior to 23 May), prices were below breakeven for a number of commodities in the Corn Belt across the Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas...
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...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Bangladesh has asked the USA for technical assistance to improve grain storage and strengthen quality testing of imported grains. Of major importance to Bangladesh is the “technology to improve grain preservation and grain s...
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.