World Perspectives

Inflation, Monetary Policy and Ag Trade

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) made some noteworthy changes to its economic outlook at last week’s meeting, revising its forecast of personal consumption expenditures (PCE) to 1.5 percent for 2019 and 1.9 percent for 2020. The PCE is the standard measure used by the Fed for inflation excluding ag and energy. The March PCE forecast was 1.8 percent for this year and 2 percent for 2020. Of course, the Fed’s target for inflation is 2 percent. The downward revised forecast is therefore a precursor to the FOMC considering a rate cut to bump inflation up to that target. The June meeting was a dot-plot meeting, which involves the Fed releasing a chart of the members’ outlook on future interest r...

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Summary of Futures

Dec 24 Corn closed at $4.2475/bushel, down $0.0075 from yesterday's close. Mar 25 Wheat closed at $5.5575/bushel, down $0.09 from yesterday's close. Jan 25 Soybeans closed at $9.8575/bushel, up $0.0225 from yesterday's close. Jan 25 Soymeal closed at $295.9/short ton, up $4.4 fro...

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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.

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