The condition of China's cotton stocks is unknown, but it appears there is some confidence that Beijing will not dump its excess on the world market. Own Petard Cotton is the only crop that will have larger global surplus stocks this year than in the past decade, and yet U.S. farmers are forecast to give the crop a larger boost in production (+10.5 percent) than any other major crop. This is because stocks are low in the U.S., while China holds most of the world's surplus cotton. China accumulated the stocks due to its guarantee of a high price to farmers. The government is now switching to a target price approach that will instead make a deficiency payment to producers. The condition of China's stocks is unknown, but it appears there is...
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: 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...