The government of Brazil today proposed raising the agriculture sector budget by 20 percent. Considering that it is cutting expenditures elsewhere, this was somewhat of a surprise and may not be as large an increase as it may appear. India Reduces Forecast for Monsoon Rainfall India's government today reduced its forecast for rainfall during the upcoming monsoon season from 93 percent of normal to 88 percent. The decrease was based in part on the late arrival of the monsoon and the emergence of an El Nino weather pattern. If the forecast is accurate, the country could suffer its first drought since 2009.About half of India's farmland depends totally on rainfall for crop moisture. As an example, almost all of the country's soybeans are non...
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.