The August WASDE confirmed -- if there was any doubt -- that drought-reduced production of U.S. soybeans and corn in 2012 absolutely will require that domestic and export demand for both in 2012/13 be curtailed enough to meet limited available supplies and still leave a minimal pipeline carryover. In the absence of some sort of government intervention, the only way to shrink demand is through prices that are so high that potential buyers/users cannot justify buying/using U.S. corn or soybeans. This process is commonly referred to as price rationing. Clearly, USDA assumes significant price rationing will occur in its August supply/demand estimates for U.S. corn and soybeans.Having mentioned government intervention, we should probably digre...
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.