Regional Updates The COVID19 outbreak continues to be the dominating force in commodity and equity markets around the world. With the virus curtailing travel and causing crude oil prices to plummet, commodities tied to oil (like soyoil) are receiving commensurate selling pressure. More broadly, concerns about global economic growth or a slowdown have prompted strong risk-off activity in global equity markets. Selling from managed money funds is further pressuring agricultural commodity markets. The weather across Europe continues to hold a pattern of above-average warmth and precipitation. The UK, northern France, and western Germany have received above-normal precipitation this winter and the 3-7 day forecast holds more of the same...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to -$218/head last week, down $20 from the prior week as a softer Choice cutout combined with slightly lower fed cattle prices. The cutout slipped to $391/cwt while fed cattle prices eased to $256/cwt, leaving packer profits under pressure. Margins remain deeply...
What You Need to Know Today: The U.S. and Iran agreed to a peace deal on Monday with the deal expected to be signed Friday in Switzerland. The memorandum signed is explicit that Iran will allow 60 days of toll-free transit for all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and President Trump annou...
The U.S. and Iran announced a framework peace deal. Crude oil futures dropped to $83.08, the lowest since early March. The breakthrough comes as President Trump said that if Iran failed to reach a deal, he would order renewed military attacks. An LNG tanker chartered by India’s Petronet 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.