World Perspectives
livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins abandoned their two-week streak of positive numbers and fell $102/head last week to -$47. The move was expected as the Choice cutout was steady/weaker across the week while fed cattle prices jumped $8-10/cwt higher. The weaker margins are still not as bad as recent history, however, and are in-line with values recorded for most of 2024. WPI does not have evidence of this, but our feeling, based on conversations with industry players, is that economist-estimated margins of -$30 to -40/head are actually breakeven or slightly profitable. The reasoning is that such margins are likely within the range where plants can either make minor tweaks to labor and staffing or procurement strategies and turn a profit. Or, packers&rsquo...

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livestock

Livestock Roundup: Cattle on Feed Preview

USDA’s monthly Cattle on Feed report will be released tomorrow. Analysts’ pre-report consensus estimates are for the total inventory on feed to be 98.1 percent of last year with the range of estimates between 97.4 and 98.6 percent of 1 August 2024. Those estimates imply an on-feed i...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Summary of Futures

Dec 25 Corn closed at $4.04/bushel, up $0.0075 from yesterday's close.  Dec 25 Wheat closed at $5.2825/bushel, up $0.07 from yesterday's close.  Nov 25 Soybeans closed at $10.36/bushel, up $0.0225 from yesterday's close.  Dec 25 Soymeal closed at $297.2/short ton, up $1.3 from ye...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: CBOT Rallies, but is it a Correction or a Trend Reversal?

The CBOT turned higher at mid-week with wheat leading the way and corn and soybeans following on somewhat minor news items. Wheat saw a strong rally develop that created bullish key reversals on the charts after rumors of Asian export demand – fueled by the U.S. Gulf’s discount to R...

livestock

Livestock Roundup: Cattle on Feed Preview

USDA’s monthly Cattle on Feed report will be released tomorrow. Analysts’ pre-report consensus estimates are for the total inventory on feed to be 98.1 percent of last year with the range of estimates between 97.4 and 98.6 percent of 1 August 2024. Those estimates imply an on-feed i...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Summary of Futures

Dec 25 Corn closed at $4.04/bushel, up $0.0075 from yesterday's close.  Dec 25 Wheat closed at $5.2825/bushel, up $0.07 from yesterday's close.  Nov 25 Soybeans closed at $10.36/bushel, up $0.0225 from yesterday's close.  Dec 25 Soymeal closed at $297.2/short ton, up $1.3 from ye...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: CBOT Rallies, but is it a Correction or a Trend Reversal?

The CBOT turned higher at mid-week with wheat leading the way and corn and soybeans following on somewhat minor news items. Wheat saw a strong rally develop that created bullish key reversals on the charts after rumors of Asian export demand – fueled by the U.S. Gulf’s discount to R...

Rearranged Trade Impacts

U.S. tariffs are reordering world trade and may further impact the nation’s agricultural exports. While soybean exports to China are stalled as that nation redirects all of its purchases to South America, that has been a political position that ignores the lower cost of U.S. soybeans. How...

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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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