With the closure yesterday and overnight because of New Year’s Day, CME grain futures markets opened for the first post-holiday trading session at 9:30 a.m. (EST) this morning. The long weekend’s primary weather story was the extremely cold temperatures that blanketed the Midwest and much of the Mid-South as well as a large majority of the Plains. That and dry conditions have likely resulted in some winterkill for both HRW and SRW, but the amount cannot be assessed until the wheat starts to green up after dormancy. However, the threat was enough to set wheat up as the day’s futures market leader. Besides that influence, the soy complex also responded to forecasts of only limited rainfall over Argentine crop areas for the n...
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.
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...