Aussie Feeder Cattle Boom The inventory of Australian cattle in feedlots is at a record high despite bullish grain prices Down Under. The drivers have been drought and a lack of suitable grazing pasture. The total at the end of June (via quarterly inventory reports) was 1.12 million head, which is 103 percent of June 2017 and 109 percent larger than the previous quarter (end of March). Grain-fed cattle marketings were up 106 percent at the end of June but are trending toward a much bigger increase next quarter as placements were 112 percent of the earlier quarter. Typically, the quarter ending in September is a seasonal high for these marketing, but the drought will push them even higher than normal patterns. Feedlot capacity utiliz...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump suspended the planned attacks on Iran and announced that the pieces for a framework for peace were in place in a weekend social media post. Iran, however, later said no efforts were underway to conduct negotiations with the U.S., though Oman indicat...
Key Takeaways: E15 expansion would support corn and ethanol demand by increasing domestic biofuel consumption and reducing reliance on petroleum-based fuels. Year-round E15 has gained bipartisan momentum, but the policy remains in legislative limbo as lawmakers continue to negotiate provisions...
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.