World Perspectives
livestock

Cattle on Feed Report: Record February Placements

USDA released the monthly Cattle on Feed report today. As has been the case more often than not since mid-2023, actual placements have exceeded the pre-report estimates.  Coming into today’s report the consensus estimate among analysts was for placements to be 106 percent of last year’s total. As WPI wrote yesterday, weather last year was expected to have an impact. Weather conditions kept a lid on February 2023 placements, and 2024 January weather led to fewer cattle being placed, deferring them into February. As WPI wrote after the 1 February Cattle on Feed report, as January’s “wet and muddy conditions have improved, it is likely that February placements have rebounded.” And rebound they did. Actual...

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livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins weakened further, with estimated net losses widening to -$233/head. While boxed beef values continued to firm, gains were outpaced by higher fed cattle prices, pressuring gross margins despite stable carcass weights and drop values. Packer profitability remains well below se...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Soybeans Surge as Trumps Says China in for Another 8 MMT

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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.

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