This year’s La Niña event has been categorized as historically a moderate one. The rains coming to parts of South America this weekend attest to it not being a historically strong event. However, this makes guessing its final impact on crops more challenging to assess. Another challenge is the fact that crop production has changed dramatically over the years, particularly in Brazil. The last moderate La Niña occurred in 2011/2012 when Brazil was not even considered by USDA to be a major producer/exporter of corn. If 2011/2012 is nonetheless considered an analog year, between the January and June WASDE reports in 2012, USDA reduced the Argentine corn crop by 5 MMT (-19 percent) but raised the Brazilian crop by 8 MM...
What You Need to Know Today: Markets got a surprise with a corn yield of 181.2 bushels/acre in the October WASDE, above the average estimate of 177.6 bushels/acre and up from USDA’s September estimate of 178.5 bushels/acre. Although stronger demand is expected to absorb some of the addit...
The USDA has lowered its 2026 red meat production forecasts slightly while forecasting a slight increase in broiler production. Beef is now projected at 24.802 billion pounds, 75 million pounds less than in September. Cow slaughter is expected to be up; however, this will be offset by lower ste...
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.