World Perspectives

Deep Bench to Fight RFK; China Market Risk; Thankless Job

Deep Bench to Fight RFKBeing the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture is usually a pretty good job. It involves doling out billions of dollars, the constituency is dominated by courteous country people, and controversies tend to be minor. The person serving the longest in any Cabinet position was James “Tama Jim” Wilson at USDA for 16 years. Current USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack will have served in the position for 12 years. Henry A. Wallace served as USDA chief for eight years before being elevated to Vice President. Officially, the position is mid-tier in the presidential line of succession. But it is technically oriented, and the weakest secretaries have been those ill-suited to the job. Per Dave Juday’s discussion of who might be the next US...

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Market Commentary: Green Despite Many Obstacles

There was mostly green on the board for Friday and for the week as a whole. Another contract high was printed by soyoil as higher energies, higher inflation, and heightened geopolitical tensions all favored commodities.  There are some topical contrasts. For example, the cattle market is t...

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Summary of Futures

May 26 Corn closed at $4.485/bushel, up $0.05 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Wheat closed at $5.915/bushel, up $0.17 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Soybeans closed at $11.7075/bushel, up $0.0725 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Soymeal closed at $320.5/short ton, down $0.4 from...

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Cold Storage Report: Up over Last Month, Down on the Year

The Cold Storage report for January showed that red meat and poultry supplies rose from the month ending December, but total supplies are down from a year ago and well below the 5-year average. Total supplies were 1.878 billion pounds, down 2.5 percent from a year ago. This indicates a tighteni...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Green Despite Many Obstacles

There was mostly green on the board for Friday and for the week as a whole. Another contract high was printed by soyoil as higher energies, higher inflation, and heightened geopolitical tensions all favored commodities.  There are some topical contrasts. For example, the cattle market is t...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Summary of Futures

May 26 Corn closed at $4.485/bushel, up $0.05 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Wheat closed at $5.915/bushel, up $0.17 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Soybeans closed at $11.7075/bushel, up $0.0725 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Soymeal closed at $320.5/short ton, down $0.4 from...

livestock

Cold Storage Report: Up over Last Month, Down on the Year

The Cold Storage report for January showed that red meat and poultry supplies rose from the month ending December, but total supplies are down from a year ago and well below the 5-year average. Total supplies were 1.878 billion pounds, down 2.5 percent from a year ago. This indicates a tighteni...

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Hog and Pork Outlook

The recent volatility in lean hog futures — from fresh contract highs at the end of January to the dramatic early-February selloff — has many in the industry (and WPI clients) wondering what will happen next. WPI’s latest analysis indicates that while pork demand remains stron...

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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.

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