The Market Oilseed markets have certainly seen no lack of volatility over the past several weeks, with the EPA’s surprise, bullish Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) mandates release a little less than two weeks ago, which was followed by the Israel-Iran conflict. That conflict drove crude oil – and by extension, vegoil – prices sharply higher and pushed crush margins to new, seasonal highs. Now, favorable weather is driving the soy complex sharply lower with new crop soybeans plunging below technical support and threatening the $10.00 mark. Spot soymeal futures hit an eight-year low on Wednesday and are lower still on Thursday, while soyoil futures are trying to stabilize near the 52.00 cents/lb level. C...
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: Agricultural commodities were mostly lower on the day, with red-hot soyoil a notable exception. Export sales were a bit underwhelming, particularly for corn with export sales down 52 percent week-over-week. The weakness in ag markets tracked crude oil weakness wit...
With the war in Iran affecting fuel and fertilizer prices, higher tariffs, weak commodity prices, ag labor constraints, and other factors, farm bankruptcies are now at a 6-year high, a signal of growing stress. During the month of April, 62 Chapter 12 bankruptcies were filed, which is a 1...
Food Inflation The Open Markets Institute, which is notably funded by several “anonymous” donors and liberal foundations, obtained a guest editorial in the New York Times in which they blame agribusiness concentration for higher grocery prices. This is their schtick and it is politi...