Livestock China’s Live Hog Supply Improves for 10th Consecutive Month July figures from China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) show the country’s reproductive sow inventory ticked up by 4 percent from June. Similarly, the total live hog inventory increased by 4.8 percent this past month. That marks ten consecutive months of growth for both reproductive sows and total live hogs. Farming operations also continued to recover in July. A total of 2,916 new hog farms were completed last month, bringing the total thus far in 2020 to just over 9,000 new entities. This expansion is quite significant given the large number of small and medium-sized operations that exited in late 2018 and throughout 2019 during th...
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
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.