Chinese Pork Situation and Trade Outlook After the initial finding of African Swine Fever (ASF) in China in August, the disease has been found in three-quarters of the country’s provinces and cull estimates are between 200,000-250,000 pigs. The latest discovery was in Heilongjian Province on a farm that has about a third of that cull total (i.e. more than 70,000 head) on premise. Now the Chinese government has announced that all packers must test for ASF starting 1 February and cull all pigs in the slaughter queue as well as suspend operations for 48 hours if ASF is detected. This is the latest mitigation effort imposed on packers; they must already separate pigs for slaughter runs by the animals’ origins. Also, bl...
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.