Mexico Looks to Brazil Last March Mexico suspended all imports of meat and poultry from Brazil in response to the Carne Fraca meat inspection scandal. This month Mexican officials will be in Santa Catarina, Brazil’s largest hog-producing state and second-largest poultry-producing state, to establish an export protocol to supply Mexico with pork. Santa Catarina is also the only state in Brazil that has been declared free of foot-and-mouth (FMD) without vaccinations. Mexico is diversifying its supply base for pork, but the process could be cumbersome given the animal health issue. Were Brazilian pork to gain access to Mexico, it would be through the new duty-free tariff rate quota (TRQ) that the latter created as part of its trade cap...
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.