News Updates KAZAKHSTAN AND IRAN Iran reportedly is very interested in importing grain from Kazakhstan and will build grain elevators to handle the Kazakh grain. There was talk that Iran will be used as a conduit for Kazakh grain to other countries in the region, with Kazakh grain coming down the Caspian Sea to Iranian ports and then cross-country in Iran to export ports close to the Middle East. This certainly looks like a reasonable alternative to shipping out of the Black Sea, where -- one assumes -- transit times to the Middle East or Asia would be longer and freight costs higher.The Kazakh government has suggested that it might change the current grain export subsidies to a truck leasing program that would supply the actual g...
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.