Oilseeds Trade War and Weather Made Brazil China’s Main 2018 Source Recently released data from China’s Customs Bureau show how much China came to rely on Brazil in 2018 for its imported soybeans. The sharp uptick in imported soybeans from the South American giant was due primarily to the trade war between China and the U.S., which went in to full effect at the beginning of July. The other important factor was weather, which adversely impacted harvest conditions in Argentina, thereby reducing that country’s production. According to the statistics, from January through the end of November, a total of 61.7 MMT of soybeans from Brazil reached Chinese ports, up 12.8 MMT (+25.9 percent) from the same period in 2018. From Jul...
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.