Dec 24 Corn closed at $4.165/bushel, up $0.02 from yesterday's close. Dec 24 Wheat closed at $5.6875/bushel, up $0.0075 from yesterday's close. Jan 25 Soybeans closed at $9.9725/bushel, up $0.035 from yesterday's close. Dec 24 Soymeal closed at $299.6/short ton, up $4.3 from yesterday's close. Dec 24 Soyoil closed at 45.56 cents/lb down 0.74 cents from yesterday's close. Dec 24 Live Cattle closed at $185.075/cwt down $0.85 from yesterday's close. Jan 25 Feeder Cattle closed at $242.425/cwt down $0.775 from yesterday's close. Dec 24 Lean Hogs closed at $83.225/cwt down $0.85 from yesterday's close. Dec 24 WTI Crude Oil closed at $71.56/barrel up $2.07 from yesterday's close. ...
Key Takeaways: Cattle producers are currently capturing a greater proportion of total retail beef values amid tight cattle supplies. Packers are forced to make higher bids on cattle to keep operations running when supplies are tight, hurting packer margins. Sustained poor packer margins...
Key Market Insights Today was another reminder that this market is trading headlines first, facts second. Early optimism surrounding reports of a possible U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding helped pressure energy risk premium and kept the broader commodity space defensive. An hour later, how...
Dangerously Clueless Lazy analysts and food system critics have shifted attention temporarily from how bad our food is (UPFs,) to why it is expensive. Bloomberg correctly sites higher labor costs, tariffs, weather (El Niño), fertilizer prices, higher energy and transportation costs, the...
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.