Wheat Last week’s rainfall covered much of Argentina’s western wheat-growing region, improving prospects for cereals there. Still, 27.3 percent of the area now shows excess water — up from 7 percent the prior week — mainly in the east and south, where fungal disease outbreaks are emerging. Despite this, 98 percent of the crop remains rated normal to excellent, favorable for the 26.9 percent already at stem elongation or further. Water demand will increase as the crop moves into reproductive stages, so the recent rains are still viewed as a net positive. Some areas received more than 150 mm in just two days, and while water has not yet caused widespread problems, persistent heavy rains could create issues later...
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.