USDA released an initial glimpse at of its MY 2018/19 U.S. supply and demand estimates early this morning, which were fail-safe across the board. They caused no controversy and sparked no market reaction, either bullish or bearish. Following is a quick recap: Corn – The 2018 corn planted acreage was basically left unchanged from last year. Most analysts today believe there will be a decline because of the relatively low corn price and the rally in new crop soybean prices. USDA pegged the 2018 corn yield at 174 bushels/acre, down from last year’s record 176.6/acre but still the third-largest ever (if realized). Corn ending supplies are projected to drop 80 million bushels from the current year, which is an insignificant ad...
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.