Cow-calf margins hit all-time record highs in 2025 as the industry benefited from the downstream impacts of record-breaking beef demand and the smallest beef cattle herd in decades. As WPI readers will know well, the resulting supply crunch boosted cattle prices across the production landscape to all-time highs. These record prices, coupled with relatively inexpensive feed and other cost levels, resulted in record profits. For 2025, WPI’s models estimate the average Southern Plains cow-calf operation received about $992/cow-unit above total costs last year, breaking the prior record set in 2014 ($526/cow-unit). On an inflation-adjusted basis (2010 dollars), this year’s profits would equate to $693/cow-unit, about 50 percen...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.