Several factors indicate that USDA's quarterly Hogs & Pigs Report, scheduled to be released tomorrow, will show a larger swine inventory. How much of an increase, though, is the question.Last week we noted that the trade expected the upcoming Cattle on Feed Report to come in at 93 percent of last year, which would be the fourth straight month in a row of placements below the previous year. USDA's actual number for February placements came in at 92 percent. Total inventory on feed as of 1 March was down .5 percent. The inventory included 6.94 million steers and steer calves, up 2 percent from 2014 and accounting for 65 percent of the total inventory. Heifers and heifer calves account for 3.67 million head, down 2 percent from last year.U...
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.