The market reacted bearishly to reports of HPAI in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas, implying concerns about a demand shock. USDA advised there is no risk to human health and the animals are recovering. Nonetheless, feeder cattle futures dropped $3-5 and live cattle prices dropped over $2/cwt. Class III milk futures were mixed, even though the impact is on dairy cows. Spent cows eventually go to the beef market but comprise less than 3 percent of the cattle slaughter. The trade’s excitement is in cattle because their numbers are at 50-year lows, while returns to dairy cows have been stagnant. Yet it is the pull from the beef side that is leading to an eventual spike in dairy prices. Dairy farmers see high prices for beef calves and low...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.