US and Chinese Perspectives on the Trade War – 2019 March Update

From our previous article, we compared the attitudes from the different perspectives of American and Chinese regard to the trade war (trade talks) since March of 2018. After the last round negotiation on February 15th, 2019, President Trump has delayed tariffs scheduled for March 1st on Chinese goods because they are “moving along nicely with…

Rachel’s Internship Experience

I remember way back in October when I saw an email from my department at Iowa State University about a Marketing-Communications Internship with Decision Innovation Solutions. I was immediately intrigued and thought to myself, this sounds like the perfect position for me! I was definitely correct and am very happy and grateful that DIS offered…

Iowa Ethanol Gross Production Margins Update: February 2019

In this month's report, we look at the ethanol crush spread. Ethanol crush spread is a dollar value calculated as the difference between the combined sales values of ethanol, distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) and corn distillers oil (CDO) and the cost of corn in producing ethanol.

U.S. Soybean Exports Growing in Markets other than China in 2018/19

Iowa is the number two soybean producer in the country after Illinois. In 2018/19 Iowa produced 565 million bushels of soybeans, which was about 12.4 percent of U.S. soybean production (4.544 billion bushels). U.S. soybean production is mainly destined for crush plants in the domestic market or for exports.