U.S. farmers must soon make their 2015 crop revenue insurance decision, and it is likely that they will take reduced coverage per acre in reaction to certain financial considerations that could also impact production.Weather will now start to play a more important role in the markets. Temperatures across the western half of the U.S. have been 20-30 degrees above normal the past 10-14 days. This has totally melted any snow cover all the way into Canada. Having that occur this early automatically means temperatures will be above normal for this time of the year. 70°F in Fargo on 12 March set a new record. In fact, temperatures this warm and this early have only happened twice before in history. That will also break the hard red winter wheat c...
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.