Global Soy Demand May Take Big Hit from African Swine Fever The widespread outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) is now well known, and it continues unabated in China even though controlling the disease has been made a top priority there. The Chinese government has officially indicated that there have been 110 separate cases in over 20 provinces, but most observers assume the number is much higher. It also admits that the country’s pig and sow herds were down 16.6 percent and 19.1 percent, respectively, in February versus a year earlier. The declines in that month alone were 5.4 percent for pigs and 5 percent for sows, and both herds will no doubt be even lower at the end of March. With a total swine herd of about 440 million, the l...
What You Need to Know Today: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured reelection on Sunday, defeating right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro despite trailing in the first round of voting. The surprise victory triggered a sharp selloff in Brazilian financial market...
The 2026 midterm elections are a week from tomorrow, but early voting has been taking place for weeks. At stake is control of Congress, including the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are contested, and the Senate, where approximately one-third of the seats are up for election. Farm...
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.