The adage that “the devil is in the details” has been borne out twice in the past week. These instances involved USDA’s new GM labeling rule and the new hemp regulation. GM Labeling – Not included in these new USDA labeling strictures, which will begin a two-year phase-in period on 1 January 2020, is a requirement that highly-refined ingredients be indicated. This would include fats from vegetable oils such as corn and soybeans as well as sweeteners from sugar beets and corn fructose. Soybeans, corn, and sugar beets have an adoption rate of 90 percent or more when it comes to genetic modification. The same is true for cotton as oil crushed from its seeds is also used in food products. The most common use of these c...
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.