World Perspectives
livestock

Livestock Round Up: Beef and Butter for the Holidays

As of today, week to date cattle slaughter is 99.7 percent of the same period last week. Last Thursday, we speculated that last week’s slaughter “could creep up on 670,000 head” – it was 668,000, making it the second highest week of the year. 

Between now and Christmas, packing plants run at as high a capacity as they can to fulfill holiday demand. With some of the front-end cattle supplies at feed yards having been worked through, the combined effect would be some bullish cattle prices. Today’s negotiated trade for steers and heifers was $130/cwt. That is providing support to futures, although there was some correction today from yesterday’s highs.  Another commodity bouncing back with holi...

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Mexico’s 2025/26 sugar production is estimated to be 5.024 million MT, reflecting about a 6 percent increase from 4.7 million MT after the past two years of weather-affected output, including both persistent drought and ill-timed rains. Nonetheless, production remains near the low end com...

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livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins reversed sharply to -$17/head from $120/head the prior week, as rising fed cattle prices more than offset a modest decline in the Choice cutout. Fed cattle prices increased $12.92/cwt from the prior week while the cutout slipped $3.24/cwt, compressing gross margins and pushi...

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From WPI Consulting

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.

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