Wednesday’s headline in the ag markets was President Trump’s social media post that indicated soybeans will be on the agenda for his upcoming summit with President Xi. The news was the first significant acknowledgement by the administration since starting the trade war that it is having a negative impact on U.S. soybean exports. Typically, by this time of the year, the U.S. has booked 250-600 Mbu of soybean exports to China and about 800 Mbu in total export bookings. Current bookings to China are, of course, zero while total bookings are just above 400 Mbu, down 37 percent YTD. So, the impact of the trade war is abundantly clear. It was no surprise, then, when futures markets reacted to the president’s post with a bu...
What You Need to Know Today: The U.S. dollar continued to strengthen Thursday as persistent inflation reinforced expectations for additional Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. Higher Treasury yields have helped support the dollar, potentially reducing the competitiveness of U.S. agricultural...
In yesterday’s WASDE, USDA reduced its overall red meat and poultry production forecast for 2026 as declines in beef and broiler output more than offset increases in pork and turkey production. Fourth-quarter beef production was revised downward because of slower fed cattle marketings and...
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.