Last week we reported on the backlog of propane deliveries across the Corn Belt and noted that farmers who have the capability to use natural gas have a relative advantage. Propane stocks are very near the top of their five-year average, but most of the inventory is in the Gulf, positioned for export and not enough pipeline capacity (at least this year) to the Midwest. Much the same is happening in natural gas, except there is new pipeline capacity into the heartland. The U.S. has added or is adding about 16 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) capacity in 2019. The Energy Department tracks 134 active natural gas pipeline projects and 46 of those are new to 2019. Another will be on-line in 2020, linking production in Colorado to Illinois...
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
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.