After several months of very profitable crush margins, the Chinese soybean crushing industry has seen margins collapse to very unprofitable levels in the last few weeks. China's COFCO Apparently Seeking to Buy Major Stake in Nidera Reuters reported today that China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation (COFCO) is in advanced talks to buy a major stake in the Dutch grain trader Nidera. COFCO, a state-owned enterprise, is a large soybean processor in China and is expanding into feed milling and swine production. A source in Asia indicated that it wanted to acquire a majority stake in Nidera and may be willing to pay $2 billion to do so. By purchasing a large share of the company, COFCO would gain direct access to soybean and cor...
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.