Congress made a number of major changes to crop support programs, and farmers will be faced with some decision-making regarding new coverage options. It is certainly in USDA's best interest to distribute as much information as possible to them before the decision deadline.The House Agriculture Committee's subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management held a hearing yesterday on the status of USDA's implementation of the Agricultural Act of 2014. Testifying on behalf of USDA was Undersecretary Michael Scuse. According to Scuse, USDA's first priority was disaster assistance, which was in place by 15 April after the farm bill was signed on 7 February. Scuse said that was 20 percent of the time it took to implement programs after...
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.