Farm Bill Little to no progress has been made on the farm bill, souring hopes of finishing in early 2024. The fault line remains funding. Typically, over the years of past farm bills, WPI has viewed the concern over lack of budgetary resources as a red herring issue – there is always concern expressed that there is a lack of funding available, but a new farm bill is passed with increased funding for various programs. This year is a bit of an anomaly; the tensions over the budget are real, which led in part to the House removing then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California). Plus, there is the complication of allocating extra spending that is built into the baseline which came from the various stimulus packages, especially the Inflation...
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.