Grain and soy prices chopped slightly around either side of unchanged in overnight trade, giving rise to thoughts that those markets might be able to muster up a Turnaround Tuesday. However, it was not to be. Renewed fund selling of corn and soybean contracts kept prices under pressure throughout the day session, sending them to new lows. Chicago and KC wheat prices did gain around 3 cents, but that is not much of a turnaround given the beating they received yesterday and during the past several trading days. Renewed fund selling, cheaper soybean and corn offers out of Brazil and Argentina fueled by their currency weakness, forecasts for a few days of drier/warmer weather for the central Corn Belt, the lack of any visible movement on a Chi...
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.