White wheat is being heavily purchased by China, but not for its usual purpose. The U.S. has five major wheat classes. Hard Red Winter (HRW) is the largest by production and has high protein and strong gluten. Durum has the lowest production but is also a high gluten product. Two-thirds of wheat futures contracts are traded in Soft Red Winter even though it is a relatively minor wheat class. It serves as a proxy for overall wheat. Soft white, or white wheat is predominantly grown in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and has two sub-classes plus two different growing seasons, both winter and spring varieties. It is heavily used in Asian-style noodles, and bakery products like sponge cakes and pastries. But China has been buying larger amount...
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.
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...
Monday, 25 May is a U.S. holiday, and both the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next issue of Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 26 May. The WPI staff wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend...
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...