One might say that grain and soy futures markets are a function of relative sizes. Fundamentally, their prices are moved by how big or small crop production may be, by how large or how limited demand may be and by the size of each year’s ending stocks. Said another way, the fundamental supply and demand factors that set up futures market price movement and direction each crop cycle are ultimately measured by size. Of course, there are a myriad of different elements that work to determine the size of each crop, the amount of demand for crops, ending stocks and the like. The sizes involved are seldom viewed as absolutes. More often they are compared to the past history of the same set of sizes. By itself a 16 billion bu U.S...
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.
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...