The U.S. Grains Council just released its 2016/17 Corn Harvest Quality Report, and the analysis of the 2016 U.S. crop goes quite far toward explaining how it became so big and surprised such a large number of crop analysts.The 2016 U.S. corn crop was a record by every measure. USDA pegged the yield at an all-time high of 175.3 bushels/acre with total production at 15.226 billion bushels (386 MMT), which are simply incredible numbers. There were all sorts of discussions throughout the summer and into the actual harvest period regarding how the crop looked much better from the road than in the fields as well as about excessive ear tip-back, poor kernel set, shallow kernels, etc. The Pro Farmer tour highlighted many of those potential yield-ro...
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...
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.