Regional News Farmer selling stayed limited across much of Europe last week as low flat prices, year-end cash-flow planning, and holiday-period logistics reduced the appetite to move tonnage. The practical impact was a thinner spot market: bids softened on paper, but physical values in several regions proved stickier than futures implied because nearby availability did not improve. UK and Northwest European merchants continued to flag December shipment constraints and reduced haulage capacity, reinforcing the “wait until January” marketing mindset. EU potato markets remain under pressure, with prices still drifting lower across major producing regions. Dutch and German traders note ample storage availability and sluggish d...
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.