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...
What You Need to Know Today: Risk-on money flow was present in the markets Thursday with headlines in Iran and the Black Sea driving the move. Russia attacked more of Ukraine’s processing and export facilities, including a Bunge facility near the Black Sea. One of the facilities hit was...
Key Takeaways: The significance of $100-per-barrel crude depends largely on how long prices remain elevated, as sustained high energy costs are more likely to influence longer-term agricultural decisions. Higher crude oil prices raise farm production costs most directly through diesel, while a...
Monday was Labor Day, the traditional end to the summer grilling season and high demand for cattle. Additionally, it marks the calendar end of summer heat and a transition into more moderate temperatures. As such, the next two months are the largest marketing periods of the year for feeder catt...
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.