Weather across the Corn Belt and northern plains looks nearly perfect for the next two weeks and maybe beyond. Perfect is warm temperatures and below-normal precipitation. General Comments Markets opened lower Sunday evening on thoughts that the weekend frost/freeze was not as cold or as widespread as feared last Friday. November soybeans were as much as 10-11 lower in the first minutes of trade, but that turned out to be the low for the day. Corn and soybean markets rebounded on ideas that the USDA/FSA acreage numbers to be released tomorrow will reflect lower planted acres than what USDA/NASS has been using. This acreage argument rages every year with no resolution. Smaller planted acres would mean smaller harvested acres and that would...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Monday, 25 May is a U.S. holiday, and both the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next issue of Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 26 May. The WPI staff wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report was released today. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity amounted to 11.6 million head, 102 percent of last year. Source: USDA, WPI Placements were up, but part of that is attributable to persistent drought c...
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.