While the overall trend for corn has been lower, soybean futures stayed in backwardation longer than corn contracts. As confidence grows in new crop prospects, bear spreading increases. But longer deferred corn contracts are currently showing greater relative value than the equivalent soybean contracts. The value of December 2024 corn is 8.4 percent higher than December 2023 corn. By contrast, August 2024 soybeans are only valued 2.6 percent above November 2023 soybeans. Picking different positions can alter the ratios but not enough to change the overall trend. The last time the deferred corn contract showed relatively higher value over the nearby versus comparable soybean contracts was in 2020. ...
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.