The Russians and the G-7 traded charges blaming each other for causing global food insecurity. EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski finally framed the situation correctly by saying the war has caused market distortions. Global trade in wheat and soybeans has continued to expand. Corn exports have fallen but that is due to production shortfalls in suppliers (Argentina, USA) much larger than Ukraine. Sunflower seed exports have increased, though that is because Ukraine has processed less meal and oil and instead exported seed. If Sub-Saharan Africa is the most food insecure region, its imports of corn increased despite the overall decline in global production and trade. Sub-Saharan Africa’s wheat imports dipped by 4.5...
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.