Regional News Russia’s recent strikes against Ukraine and poor progress in peace talks between the two countries in Istanbul have added “war risk” premia back into several markets, including wheat. Farmers in Spain and France were protesting, again, agricultural imports from Ukraine and South America under the MERCOSUR free trade agreement (FTA) ahead of the Ukraine FTA and a visit from Brazilian President Lula da Silva. Europe and the UK saw beneficial rains last week that offered widespread relief for the oat crops. Sweden, Germany, and the UK saw above-average rainfall that will help boost production prospects. Additionally, Spain is forecasting a huge oat crop and could be searching for export opportu...
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.