As has been well documented in the news over the past week, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) kept the federal funds rate unchanged on 1 November. This comes after the September meeting when the FOMC had initially signaled there would be one more rate hike this year. The Fed also opted not to raise rates in September. The question is, will July 2023 be the last rate hike of this tightening? The decision came after the sky high Q3 GDP growth of 4.9 percent. But there is more behind the curtain regarding that report. First, it was driven by consumer spending. In fact, much of that spending was on services, and within that, the Barbie movie and Taylor Swift and Beyonce’s concert tours. That doesn&rsq...
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.