Public Health COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Rise as Beijing Prepares for Lockdown After reaching a low of 25 novel coronavirus related deaths per day on 20 April, the trailing seven-day average has moved up steadily, reaching 50 as of yesterday. This doubling, as documented by Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, has coincided with the rapid rise in new cases resulting in new pandemic lockdowns across many metro areas in China. The seven-day average case count as of yesterday amounted to 31,307 cases. Over the past week, the average has fluctuated between 29,000 and 31,000 as more testing is deployed. With numbers ratcheting up in Beijing, particularly in the Chaoyang District, home to the U.S. Embassy and other diplom...
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...
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...
Let’s return briefly to the fake meat hype cycle, now sitting somewhere in a dusty corner of your mind, not entirely forgotten. What happened to all those products, known as plant-based alternative proteins? They were supposed to be as good as real meat—cheaper, more environmentally...
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.