World Perspectives
livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Livestock industry margins were mostly steady/higher last week, with the notable exception of beef packer margins. Beef processing profits fell $20/head last week as fed cattle prices rose more than beef prices and a dip in slaughter weights reduced packers’ sales volume. Feedlot margins surged last week on a break in feeder cattle costs and reductions in the cost of gain. The pork industry saw largely steady margins with processer profits decreasing slightly on a weaker pork cutout and gains in hog purchase prices. Forward-looking hog producer margins were steady with the prior week for both farrow-to-finish and wean-to-finish operations but closeout profits for both types of operations fell due to weaker basis levels. ...

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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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