Given the current state of China’s economy and its slowdown, the food inflation spike in January to the highest level since May 2014 plus the notable increases in pork/fresh produce prices raise several interesting issues. Cultural Note and the Market Chinese Holidays Impact Crushing Facilities The annual Lantern Festival, also known as the First Night Festival, occurs today and marks the end of the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) celebrations. The holiday has been celebrated for more than 2,000 years and signals the coming Chinese Lunar Year. With these back-to-back holidays (Spring and Lantern) taking place, the market has been slow as many of the soybean crushing facilities either sharply reduced operations or shut down completely...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
Key Takeaways: Texas illustrates the assumptions underlying the 2025 FMMO reform; Idaho exposes their limitations. The Southwest order blend (roughly 27 percent Class I, 32 percent Class III and 31 percent Class IV) exposes Texas producers to every lever USDA adjusted, with a near-neutral proj...
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.