As Matt Herrington has been covering, Live cattle and feeder cattle futures have been volatile since the day after Thanksgiving – but trending mostly bearish. This has sparked considerable conversation about the structure of the contracts, expanded limits, and liquidity in the market. The supply and demand fundamentals in the cattle market certainly suggested a more bearish outlook as an increased number of cattle were placed in feedlots and on-feed inventories built up. September placements were 106 percent and 1 October feedlot inventories were 101 percent of a year ago. October placements were 104 percent and 1 November inventories were 102 percent of year ago numbers. Given the short cattle supply situation in July,...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.