Live cattle and feeder cattle futures rallied today after feeling the pressure of news and speculation about HPAI. As WPI reported previously, USDA announced on Tuesday it would be testing ground beef in states where dairy cattle herds had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu. The samples were collected by FSIS and sent to APHIS’ National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) for PCR testing. Yesterday afternoon, USDA reported that all samples tested negative for H5N1. USDA’s announcement included the statement, “These results reaffirm that the meat supply is safe.” From there it was off to the races for the futures market with cattle futures back to trading in the ranges set in April. ...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
Key Takeaways: The Middle East and North Africa's arid climate and limited water resources have created a structural dependence on imported wheat. Government wheat tenders in major importing countries serve as important benchmarks for global trade, providing insight into exporter competitivene...
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.