Congress returns tomorrow after its Thanksgiving holiday break to face a long list of issues and the time pressurs of finalizing government funding bills. Following is what is on the “To Do” list. Four appropriations bills, including the Agriculture and FDA appropriations, must be passed by January 19th. Complicating that task, in the Senate, Democrat leaders are pushing for an additional, stand alone, $1 billion emergency funding bill for the Woman, Infants and Children’s program to increase benefits for new participants before the appropriations bill is passed by January. The other eight appropriations bills must be passed by 2 February 2024. There are 15 legislative days on the calendar until the Christma...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Monday, 25 May is a U.S. holiday, and both the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next issue of Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 26 May. The WPI staff wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report was released today. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity amounted to 11.6 million head, 102 percent of last year. Source: USDA, WPI Placements were up, but part of that is attributable to persistent drought c...