Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA/AFRICA – MEA REGION Iran has proposed to Russia that grain shipments can be made from Russia to third countries using “safe, alternative” Iran routes. Iranian officials say that this Russia/Iran route is yet to be used but that progress is being made. Iran’s failure to announce new “guaranteed purchase prices” for wheat is causing farmers to hold off on planting the winter wheat crop. Prices were originally to be announced in late July but so far there has been no announcement. Iran is the world’s second largest per capita consumer of bread, so the wheat crop is of major importance. Total wheat consumption is stated as 14 MMT with the govern...
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.