Beef packer margins reversed sharply to -$17/head from $120/head the prior week, as rising fed cattle prices more than offset a modest decline in the Choice cutout. Fed cattle prices increased $12.92/cwt from the prior week while the cutout slipped $3.24/cwt, compressing gross margins and pushi...
The CBOT markets were surprisingly insulated from a jump in crude oil that started the week. Crude oil futures rallied to $115/brl - their highest levels since the earliest days of the U.S.-Iran war - on rhetoric from the White House that signaled an escalation in the conflict. While the oil he...
Under the theory of economies of scale, the size of farms, like that of all industries, should increase over time due to improvements in productivity. Farmers themselves understand that the more land they farm, the greater their output and, thus, the larger their potential incomes. Government p...
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.