On 16 November, after the election, we reported on the transition memo for USDA to provide “recommendations that can help the President hit the ground running and build the capacity of his administration to tackle the climate crisis quickly with the existing tools at hand.” Much of the memo focused on what could be done in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration; that was followed up by the President’s Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” which tasked USDA to develop a strategy for climate smart agriculture and forestry. Last week, 90 days into the Administration, USDA released a report. The strategy was in-line with much of the transition memo, including:...
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.