Aid Overhaul Former USAID administrator Brian Atwood, who now leads the OECD's umbrella Development Assistance Committee, says that 30 percent of the world's annual $130 billion in foreign aid may be wasted. He called for cash aid in lieu of commodities, an end to the Jones Act, ethanol, subsidies for crop production and improved coordination by donors. Edward Clay of the Overseas Development Institute says that renegotiation of the Food Aid Convention should be completed soon. Most food aid is committed to emergencies, and cash-based aid has increased as a methodology, but overall donor support for food aid has declined. (e.g. Presumably, the loss of direct income benefit from commodity aid causes a drop in public support for cash aid f...
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.