At the rate canola plantings are expanding in Canada, there may not be many years before the country's canola area surpasses its total wheat area. USDA Forecasts 4 Percent Increase in 2014 U.S. Soybean Plantings USDA's first estimate for 2014 U.S. soybean plantings is 79.5 million acres, which is almost a 4 percent increase over last year's 76.533 million acres. Assuming the same national average yield (45.2 bushels/acre) USDA used in its long-range projections and a harvested area of 78.5 million acres, the resulting 2014 crop would be 3.548 billion bushels (96.58 MMT). Because of this large crop forecast, USDA is estimating the average U.S. soybean price in 2014/15 at $9.65/bushel ($354.54/MT). That would be a 24 percent decline from th...
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.