Brazilian ethanol prices have been rising, which has usually been good for U.S. ethanol exports. Bloomberg reports that increased demand for transportation fuel may force more Brazilian sugar into ethanol production rather than food. The sugar market is very tight on reduced output. U.S. ethanol exports have recently spiked to China, and have been good to India, Canada, Mexico, and other destinations. However, sales to Brazil have been hurt by a 20 percent levy reimposed by Brasilia, which has asked for increased access to the American sugar market in exchange for opening its ethanol market. The ethanol feedstock supply of sugar and corn are both tight, but corn grind has DDGS as a coproduct. This experience will likely encourage more Braz...
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.