Sunflowers have long been the top softseed produced in the U.S., reaching 3.44 million acres of planted area in 2009, with canola a minor crop by comparison. However, that dynamic has changed because of two developments in recent years. Yields and Price Problematic for Indian Soy Farmers The government of India (GOI) has a big problem at the moment with farmers protesting for higher price supports and debt forgiveness (see Ag Perspectives, 2 June and 9 June 2017), an action they took because of declining prices for soybeans and other crops. This led to five farmers being shot dead by police in the state of Madhya Pradesh on 6 June, which only intensified the protests. In addition, the agreement by the governor of another state to write of...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
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...
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.