Traders responded last evening to the South American weather situation by pushing soybean and soymeal futures prices sharply higher in heavy trading volume. This carried over into the day session, which saw March soybeans up 29.25 cents at their daily high of $10.75. General Comments It takes the next weather market to remind us how volatile they can be, and we appear to be in the next one now. More heavy rainfall over portions of Argentine soybean and corn areas has exacerbated already existing flooding that threatens to wash out planted fields and prevent or at least delay farmers from seeding unplanted land. By ironic contrast, crop areas in southern Buenos Aires and La Pampa are plagued by drought. The weather is likely to be very dry...
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.