The government shutdown in October turned the November WASDE into something quite unique. The forced cancelation of the October WASDE meant there was a two-month gap between USDA's crop production surveys and estimates. During those two months, a majority of the 2013 corn and soybean crops were harvested. The 2013 crops were to rebuild U.S. supplies that were reduced by the 2012 midwestern drought. The market's anxiety over tight supplies was heightened by the peculiar weather patterns of the 2013 growing season that began when delays caused by persistent heavy rains forced unusually late spring plantingConcerns that the combination of late planting and August dryness would cause a significant negative impact on yield and production were...
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.