After seeming intent on bundling together certain regular appropriation bills as a series of “minibus” bills prior to the election, the Republican congressional leadership is now focusing on a different approach.There is a new strategy from the Republican congressional leadership regarding the lame-duck session of Congress. As always, such sessions are difficult to predict prior to an election as the result often changes the balance of power. As previously noted (see Ag Perspectives, 7 November), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who will both retain their positions in the 115h Congress, seemed intent on bundling together certain regular appropriation bills as a series of “minibus...
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...
Key Takeaways: Total U.S. crop acres (excluding hay) are forecast to expand fractionally this year due to greater oilseed crop and winter wheat plantings. One of the key drivers of this year’s crop outlook is input costs, and crops with a lower cost profile have an advantage in producers...
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.