Biden’s Beef to Nowhere In 2005, members of the Alaska Congressional delegation tried to add funding equivalent in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars to $566 million. The purpose of the money was to build a bridge to an island with just 50 full-time residents ($11.32 million/person). It mockingly became known as the Bridge to Nowhere and was eventually pulled from the spending bill. As WPI’s Dave Juday wrote yesterday, there will be unintended consequences from President Biden’s current effort to create additional meat packing capacity in the U.S. The meat packing industry says the problem driving the large spread between cattle prices and cutout values is the shortage of labor. Industry spokesperson Sarah Little n...
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.