CBOT ag futures were highly mixed on Tuesday as traders recovered from Monday’s drubbing and limit-down move in soybeans and soyoil. At Monday’s close, the options market was suggesting soybeans and soyoil were trading significantly lower than the limit-down close permitted, but tho...
The JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, went on strike yesterday. Today is day two of the labor shutdown. The Greeley plant can process about 6,000 head per day, or 5 percent of the U.S. beef supply. This is a major disruption. Notably, it comes on the heels of Tyson closing its plant in Lexin...
Beef packer margins turned positive for the first time since late last year as returns improved to $53/head last week. The turnaround was driven by a strong increase in the boxed beef cutout, which rose to $388.16/cwt, while fed cattle prices declined further on the week. The threat of the labo...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.