July data shows that the ag trade situation has been a drag on inflationary pressure, mostly through dropped earnings from exports. Total export prices declined 0.5 percent, mostly driven by general farm commodities (down 5.3 percent) and, specifically, soybeans (down 14.1 percent). USDA will release its latest monthly forecast for food inflation later this week, and it will be instructive. In July, the broad category of “all food” items was adjusted down to an expected 0.75-1.75 percent annual inflation rate for 2018 and projected to be 1.5-2.5 percent for 2019. Food at home, which is about 58 percent of total domestic consumption, was the deflationary driver, and every category except for sugar and sweets was steady or adjust...
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.