It is a holiday shortened week this week, but the markets have absorbed the 30 June acreage and stocks reports. As Matt Herrington reported, corn was sharply down on higher than expected acreage and soybeans were up on surprisingly low acreage numbers. The winner may be cattle feeders. Packers had to scramble last week to get together this week’s kill (shortened as it may be). Many feeders took a pass on bids and fed cattle prices were improving as June closed. And then corn prices declined, a double unicorn for feeders. Generally, cheap feed means more cattle on feed, but after last year’s liquidation, there aren’t likely more cattle to be placed in feed yards. However, the drop in corn prices and the s...
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.