USDA’s GIPSA rules have been released, as promised, before President Obama leaves office. The rules have 60-day comment periods, which will expire in February and leave the ultimate decision to a new USDA under the incoming Trump administration.Yesterday USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) released its rules on livestock marketing and contracting as required by the 2008 Farm Bill. They were released in three parts: an interim final rule and two proposed rules that were collectively known as The Farmer Fair Practices Rules.This matter has been particularly contentious since 2010 when GIPSA first proposed a rule under the language provided by the aforementioned farm bill. Many producer groups and most meat i...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report was released today. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity amounted to 11.6 million head, 102 percent of last year. Source: USDA, WPI Placements were up, but part of that is attributable to persistent drought c...
Let’s return briefly to the fake meat hype cycle, now sitting somewhere in a dusty corner of your mind, not entirely forgotten. What happened to all those products, known as plant-based alternative proteins? They were supposed to be as good as real meat—cheaper, more environmentally...
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.