Timothy Massad is showing that he is a completely different chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) than his predecessor as he has announced a rework on position limits that won't hurt bonafide hedgers like agricultural and energy firms and is also taking note of how regulatory risk is pushing trades overseas. Objective Voice Needed Sales of lean, finely textured beef (LFTB) are reportedly rising along with the price of beef. Recall that LFTB was ridiculed out of production in 2012 by the harmful moniker of "pink slime." It is now three years after the debacle, and the food industry is still lacking a plan to counter harmful and erroneous information about its offerings. The product's manufacturer, Beef Products Inc., is...
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...
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...
Let’s return briefly to the fake meat hype cycle, now sitting somewhere in a dusty corner of your mind, not entirely forgotten. What happened to all those products, known as plant-based alternative proteins? They were supposed to be as good as real meat—cheaper, more environmentally...
From WPI Consulting
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.