It appears that there are bankers now offering farmers advice on what crops to plant along with their decisions regarding operating lines of credit.A call came in over the weekend from a merchandising manager with one of the major U.S. grain companies. It was in response to last Friday’s WPI analysis on USDA’s Outlook Forum and how the acreage numbers can still change because a large percentage of producers still had not finalized 2016 operating lines of credit. They might intend or want to plant more corn, but their lenders could have the final deciding vote in that decision. We had quite a lengthy conversation.Specifically, this merchandiser called to discuss a large farm customer who had previously contracted 2,000 acres of 2016 canola t...
What You Need to Know Today: Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans continued to accelerate, with USDA reporting another 558 KMT sold to China and 236 KMT to unknown destinations. Combined with sales announced Wednesday and Thursday, the latest purchases bring the three-day total to approximately...
As fall begins, wild migratory birds are starting their seasonal migration. That has the industry and government officials worried about the potential spread, again, of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Some members of Congress have called for the United States to be prepared for a pote...
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.