U.S. hog producers saw a mixed year in 2024 with early-year prices bringing poor profitability while the dramatic hog rally since the summer has lifted financial fortunes significantly. A major component of those rising prices was the unexpected surge in pork demand, which pushed the cutout to new seasonal highs this fall. Now, producers, packers, and pork buyers are wondering what 2025 will bring and how demand and prices will fare in the post-election environment. WPI has just completed an update to our long-term (one-year forward) outlook for the hog and pork markets. The major findings from this effort are that producers are likely to see strong prices for the coming year, and if crop prices do not rise significantly, strong profit...
What You Need to Know Today: It was just one of those days where seemingly everything was in the red as part of a broader risk-off economic sentiment amid de-escalation headlines in the Middle East. Other key fundamentals were also bearish, including the resumption of Mexican cattle imports an...
Key Takeaways: U.S. cow-calf producers are facing another year of record-breaking revenues and net returns for 2026, though rising cost pressures and pullbacks in cattle prices increase risks. Drought remains a key concern for much of the cow-calf industry this year, with rising feed cos...
USDA announced on Friday the coordinated, phased reopening of southern U.S.-Mexico livestock ports starting 24 August 2026, after more than a year of closures due to the spread of New World screwworm (NWS). Douglas, Arizona, will be the first port of entry to resume cattle trade on 24 August. T...
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.