Soybeans Market Overview The first week of the official U.S.-China trade war was very calm. With crush margins currently poor (using Brazilian soybeans), the Chinese are waiting before buying. It is clearly risky for a Chinese crusher to go long soybeans since the present Brazilian soybean basis can quickly drop on any sign of agreement between the U.S. and China. Since margins are poor, basis should drop as there’s no other destination that can pay close to what China can for Brazilian soybeans. This means when there is no demand from that country, basis is forced to drop. China needs to cover big volumes from September onward, but it is apparently either waiting for basis to fall or only buying in the very spot for now. U.S. soy...
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.