Food Inflation Food Prices See Biggest Jump in Four Months The average cost of food in China rose by 6.2 percent from a year ago in January, marking the third straight month of increases and the highest uptick since last October. Going back to April 2022, food prices in the country have now risen for ten consecutive months. The January number might come as a surprise given the surge in COVID-19 cases and related deaths, but with the Zero-COVID-19 policy essentially set aside, most people gathered with extended family to celebrate the lengthy Lunar and Lantern Festival holidays. The big drivers in January of higher food costs included fresh fruit, pork, vegetables, eggs, and cooking oil, which saw annualized upticks of 13.1 percent, 11.8 p...
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.