Beef packer margins snapped a six-week string of losses and gained $73/head last week due to gains in beef prices and weaker fed cattle prices. Margis were still very weak by historical records (-$143/head) but at least started to trend in the right direction. Beef values are holding steady hea...
Trade agreements were the story of the day as the U.S. reached deals with Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam and a framework for a U.S.-China agreement that could result in “substantial” purchases of U.S. soybeans. The latter statement came from U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessen...
Wheat The wheat harvest is gaining momentum in northern Argentina, with yields exceeding expectations. In the northwest, yields range from 0.8–1.5 MT/ha, above the five-year regional average of 0.82 MT/ha. In the northeast, current averages near 2.7 MT/ha surpass the previous record from...
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.