As of last Sunday, 4 August, USDA's weekly crop condition report rated 64 percent of the U.S. corn crop as being good/excellent. This was up 1 percent from the week prior and is well above the average rating for corn during the first week of August by which time weekly ratings usually tend to decline as the crop matures. The increased good/excellent rating probably reflects the visual impact of widespread precipitation over much of the Midwest except for spots in west and central Iowa and cool, non-stressful temperatures over all it. Concern that late planting would put the corn crop's pollinating stage right in the midst of the hottest part of the summer has been allayed by below-normal temperatures during July and so far in August...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.