U.S. soybean processing margins have seen considerable volatility over the past month as multiple fundamental factors upended global oilseed and product prices. The most obvious influence was the recent trade war and tit-for-tat escalation in tariffs between the U.S. and, which was exacerbated by initial delays in the South American harvest. Now, oilseed markets are adjusting to the rising competitiveness of Brazil and Argentina as export origins as well as U.S. soyoil’ s decreasing competitiveness on the export market, thanks to higher CBOT futures and weaker palm oil values in Southeast Asia. Amid this volatility, the CBOT board crush margin (that is, the margin implied by the soybean, soyoil, and soymeal futures contracts for corre...
If Wednesday’s trade proved anything, it is that not every market is listening to the same headline. Renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran sent crude oil sharply higher after Iran fired ballistic missiles at an American airbase in Jordan. President Trump promised a U.S. response, pus...
Key Takeaways: Sorghum is gaining importance as an alternative ethanol feedstock, particularly in the Southern Plains where ethanol plants can utilize the grain based on relative pricing and availability compared to corn. Sorghum’s drought tolerance makes it a valuable alternative to cor...
Executive Summary Sheep and goats represent one of the largest livestock protein systems in the world, with an estimated 2.3 billion head globally; however, they remain almost entirely absent from U.S. agricultural policy, trade strategy, and market forecasting. The U.S. small ruminant herd, at...
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.