Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA/AFRICA – MEA REGION Iraq’s government announced record local wheat purchases of 6.3 MMT. Iraq is now self-sufficient in wheat. The government says that this will help it to ensure long-term food security and economic stability. Egypt’s wheat reserves are at 6.9 months consumption, as reported by the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade. Egypt’s electricity stoppages (daily power cuts) were planned to end last Sunday but this has not happed as cuts continue. Press reports say that the situation has been very bad for the local poultry industry that depends on electricity for air conditioning for poultry houses and hatcheries. The poultry mortality rate...
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: Markets got a surprise with a corn yield of 181.2 bushels/acre in the October WASDE, above the average estimate of 177.6 bushels/acre and up from USDA’s September estimate of 178.5 bushels/acre. Although stronger demand is expected to absorb some of the addit...
The USDA has lowered its 2026 red meat production forecasts slightly while forecasting a slight increase in broiler production. Beef is now projected at 24.802 billion pounds, 75 million pounds less than in September. Cow slaughter is expected to be up; however, this will be offset by lower ste...