Summary of USDA’s December 2019 Wheat estimates: U.S. wheat exports are raised 25 million bushels to 975 million. Hard Red Winter and Durum exports are each raised 10 million bushels, and HRS is raised 5 million. With reduced supplies and higher use, 2019/20 ending stocks are cut 40 million bushels to 974 million, the lowest in 5 years. Despite the tightening stocks, the season-average farm price is lowered $0.05 per bushel to $4.55 based on NASS prices to date and expectations of cash and futures prices for the remainder of the market year. The global outlook for wheat this month is for several mostly offsetting production changes, slightly lower global use and trade, and increased ending stocks. ...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.