The final November retail sales data are in; Thanksgiving shopping dominates grocery sales and turkey is the key protein driver. This year, many groceries adopted different strategies to keep stores from being crowded during the second wave of COVID including delivery, curbside pickup, and closing on Thanksgiving Day. Shopping was earlier this year with the biggest gains coming the two weeks before Thanksgiving, and turkey sales peaking the week ending 15 November. However, beef sales grew more than turkey sales, probably reflecting different choices for smaller Thanksgiving gatherings. Also, travel restrictions and hesitation to travel drove more retail spending versus food service spending that is normally associated with holiday travel...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump claimed the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was over, as both sides accused one another of violating the terms of the agreement. Commercial vessels are increasingly steering clear of the Strait of Hormuz as security risks escalate following Iran...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
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.