The state of Maryland has reported the first human case of new world screwworm (NWS) in a person who travelled to an affected area. Reports vary citing both El Salvador and Guatemala. A statement from the Maryland Department of Health provides the details: This is the first hu...
Beef packer margins improved for the third straight week, adding more than $100/head to profits on fresh record highs in the beef market. Margins are now around -$80/head, still very low by post-2010 standards but a sharp improvement from recent losses. The broad strength across beef markets &m...
Friday’s market fireworks faded a bit on Monday as traders took the opportunity to rest and reassess fundamentals. There were no particularly big news items over the weekend to drive a big swing in markets, which meant that a lull was almost bound to follow last week’s large moves i...
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.