Russia’s cyber interference in the U.S. election was wrong, but removing some diplomats and blocking access to some buildings in the U.S. is hardly punishment of Moscow’s behavior. Tail Wags the Dog Financial Times editor Lionel Barber wrote an opinion piece on “how 2016 changed democracy.” Meanwhile, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker lamented that, “Never before have I seen national governments so weakened by the forces of populism....” Barber and Juncker have it completely backwards – 2016 showed the strength of western democracy in that the will of the people could prevail, for better or worse, over the preferences of the elites. Reacting to the dictatorial rule from across the Atlantic, the drafters of the U.S. Constit...
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.