Trading is bracketed by bearish crop yields and passable weather on one side, and reasonable demand on the other. The former prevailed today in corn, soy and beef, the latter got the better in wheat and pig meat. White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said China’s buying looks good, but there was no flash sale today. Instead we had the Pro Farmer crop tour and it is not reporting anything dramatic. Iowa is deathly dry but like the rest of the region, it may get good relief rains later next week. The full report from Pro Farmer should be released tomorrow and it will show that some areas have big yields, some parts of the Belt are underperforming average but are still better than last year. Fundamentally, it will not change the cur...
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.