The coronavirus has likely contributed to a recent spike in U.S. egg demand and consequently prices as well. Production volume cuts occurred just ahead of this increased consumer demand. Meanwhile, margins earned by major egg producing companies has been healthy despite lower volumes due to the decline in feed costs. Eggs potentially increased in popularity due to more baking during home isolation, and because eggs generally have a longer shelf-life than fresh meat and poultry. Mexico has the highest per capita egg consumption level in the world, yet the feed to produce eggs costs 36 percent more than in the U.S. Japan and China are also large per capita egg consumers with relatively higher feed costs. Japan is a net importer of egg/...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.