As we all know too well, the government shutdown continues to block nearly all of USDA's daily, weekly and monthly reports. We suppose it requires a shutdown like this, now in its 15th day, for those involved with or interested in cash and futures markets for grains and soybeans to realize just how much they depend on those inputs from USDA. Sometimes USDA's silence makes us feel as though we are traveling through unfamiliar territory and have misplaced our roadmap and GPS device. As long as we retain our sense of direction, we will eventually find our way through it. However, the process would be so much faster and better if we had access to a map or GPS (or USDA reports).The Treasury Department said that it will not have enough money to...
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.