Errata: The original version of this article incorrectly state the January 2018 soybean yield estimate at 50.6 BPA, instead of the true February (which made up for the delayed January report) estimate of 51.6 BPA. All statistics related to this yield estimate and charts/tables have been corrected below. USDA surprised the commodity markets on Friday with bullish adjustments to the U.S. corn and soybean balance sheets, particularly the unexpected reductions in yields for both commodities. The surprise created by the latest balance sheet makes it worthwhile to evaluate the USDA’s adjusted estimates relative to historical patterns. For this analysis, WPI uses the USDA’s yield, harvested acreage, and production forecasts as published in th...
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.