Tomorrow, 26 November, is the U.S. national Thanksgiving holiday, a day designed to emphasize blessings while getting together with family and friends for a celebratory meal. There have always been numerous celebrations of thanks by various countries, religions and other groups going back to early recorded history. The U.S. holiday dates back to 1601 when the Pilgrims who had settled the year before in what is now Massachusetts decided to celebrate their first successful harvest. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November to be a national holiday for giving thanks. In 1939 President Roosevelt moved the holiday one week earlier to expand the Christmas shopping season in hopes that increased consumer spending w...
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.