The cattle herd is at historic lows and herd rebuilding has continued to be put off. Profitability is the key factor, and near record cattle prices have incentivized producers for the past couple of years pushing off herd rebuilding. To date, heavier carcass weights have helped mitigate some of the effects, but they are inadequate to change the supply and demand fundamentals. Higher profitability levels incentivize expansion, but that is also a factor of timing. There are two proven trends in herd expansion, more replacement heifers and the purchase of bred heifers. One factor contributing to the contraction in the market is that heifers are still worth more in the feedlot than on pasture. Record wholesale cattle values continue to incentiv...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
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.