Livestock Squeeze of Low Prices and High Feed Costs Plagues Hog Sector The latest data release from China’s Feed Industry Association indicates that the average price for hog feed has risen for six months in a row through the end of December. Expectations are that with corn prices remaining strong and soymeal seeing modest gains in January that cost pressures will last at least through the first quarter of this year. Market reports show that in January feed mills have pushed pricing on swine feedstuffs up by an average of RMB 25 to 200/MT ($3.92 to 31.40/MT). Meanwhile, producers keep responding to the higher input costs by raising heavier hogs, even though there was some downward movement in this trend in the early fall. The nation...
What You Need to Know Today: Markets got a surprise with a corn yield of 181.2 bushels/acre in the October WASDE, above the average estimate of 177.6 bushels/acre and up from USDA’s September estimate of 178.5 bushels/acre. Although stronger demand is expected to absorb some of the addit...
The USDA has lowered its 2026 red meat production forecasts slightly while forecasting a slight increase in broiler production. Beef is now projected at 24.802 billion pounds, 75 million pounds less than in September. Cow slaughter is expected to be up; however, this will be offset by lower ste...
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.