The day session produced a bias toward lower prices, although nothing remotely close to a market collapse. Soybean futures prices were off about 17 cents at their lows, but they recovered with July soybeans closing up 1.25 cents as the November contract closed 5.5 cents lower. General Comments To the surprise of no one, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank announced at the close of its April meeting today that it would leave its interest rate unchanged. Analysts hoped that the Fed’s post-meeting statement would provide clues about the chances of a rate increase at its next meeting in June. However, its carefully worded release gave no clue about what might be expected at its next meeting even though its tone was somewhat more positive than it wa...
What You Need to Know Today: Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans continued to accelerate, with USDA reporting another 558 KMT sold to China and 236 KMT to unknown destinations. Combined with sales announced Wednesday and Thursday, the latest purchases bring the three-day total to approximately...
As fall begins, wild migratory birds are starting their seasonal migration. That has the industry and government officials worried about the potential spread, again, of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Some members of Congress have called for the United States to be prepared for a pote...
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.