Corn and soybeans continued their quiet rallies while wheat futures popped higher in a bullish, Russian-weather-fueled trading day. Cattle futures were cautious ahead of tomorrow’s reports while hog futures did their best dead-cat-bounce impression. USDA’s weekly Export Sales report was neutral corn and bearish old-crop soybeans and wheat. Old-crop corn sales exceeded the volume needed this week, but exports fell shy of their mark. Similarly, soybean sales were above their needed values, but the still-atypically-high export pace was short of the shipments needed. 2018/19 wheat exports are off to a slow start, but this week’s exports showed a modest recovery. With Black Sea prices rising, especially for deferred ship...
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.