China Purchasing Commitments One of the Trump administration’s goals in negotiating a trade deal with China is to get Beijing’s commitment to buy more American farm products, especially soybeans as well as perhaps some sorghum and DDGS. China can only import what it needs, though, and demand for animal feed ingredients like these has fallen. The scale of the hog losses there due to African swine fever (ASF) may be indicated by a reported 20 percent decline in pig feed sales in February. China has scaled back its purchasing of pork off the domestic market as a price support tool by 90 percent due to already higher pork values. Despite reduced purchasing by consumers, the price of hogs has hit a 14-month high. WTO Levera...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.