Pre-WASDE positioning sent the grains complex lower today, while livestock futures were under pressure from profit taking and lackluster cash markets. Fund managers are worried tomorrow’s report will be a repeat of the August WASDE and are paring back any long positions. It’s tough to be bullish when the market almost uniformly expects record U.S. yields. Corn and soybeans are near contract lows, which has farmers and funds largely sidelined from selling. In turn, that is leaving end users to extend coverage on what are now cheap prices. Hurricane Florence continues to barrel toward the Carolinas, threatening some of the most important barbecue-producing regions in the U.S. Beyond barbecue, however, the storm’s anticipate...
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.
Markets are caught between reasons to keep selling and reasons to take another look. Fund liquidation and renewed peace talks are pressuring grains, while fresh export business and some diesel relief offer encouragement. Corn recovered nearly 10 cents from its low to finish higher, while soybea...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...