In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota) has asked that the speaker and his leadership team commit to a schedule for a new five-year farm bill within a month.Peterson contends there will be no mark-up in the foreseeable future without an agreement and noted that the tentatively scheduled Committee meeting on 27 February is off. He called it a fool's errand to proceed without firmly scheduled floor time. Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Oklahoma) said that he supports committing to a schedule, but believes that working on a farm bill during the debt ceiling debate in February would be unproductive.Peterson also said he is opposed to including the farm bill...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
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 €...
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.