This year has seen higher commodity prices spiked by tighter ending stocks for some key commodities. However, reductions unique to this year relative to the past half-dozen are limited to just corn and palm oil. Palm oil hit a contract high this week and corn last week, though the latter is now down more than 12 percent since its peak based on trading this week. Rapeseed oil stocks are down the most from their peak in 2016, but they were lower in 2018 and 2019 than this year. Sugar stocks are 19 percent lower than in 2017, but not as low as they went in 2016 and 2017. Neither soyoil, soybeans, rice or sugar are currently as low in surplus carryover as they have been in other recent years. However, this may be a unique period for so m...
What You Need to Know Today: Markets got a surprise with a corn yield of 181.2 bushels/acre in the October WASDE, above the average estimate of 177.6 bushels/acre and up from USDA’s September estimate of 178.5 bushels/acre. Although stronger demand is expected to absorb some of the addit...
Key Takeaways: On Friday afternoon, President Trump announced that Russia will “immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel” to the United States. The deal, typical of this administration, is light on details but promises an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 m...
The USDA has lowered its 2026 red meat production forecasts slightly while forecasting a slight increase in broiler production. Beef is now projected at 24.802 billion pounds, 75 million pounds less than in September. Cow slaughter is expected to be up; however, this will be offset by lower ste...
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.