The market was wary of the way USDA's February WASDE would treat impact of the drought and heat that threated crops in Argentina and southern Brazil. Obviously, there had to be acknowledgement of damage done to crop production, but how much damage was the question. USDA's answer was to tread cautiously in the reductions reflected by its newest estimates of South American corn and soybean production. USDA cut production of corn and soybeans in the two countries by a combined 8.5 MMT from its January estimates.Generally, USDA's February Argentine/Brazilian production estimates are reasonably close to trade expectations, although there is some thought that later on there will be further reductions. A number of private crop scouts have been p...
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.