The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) today. April is the month that includes a forecast of the peak demand summer driving season fuel use, which runs from April through September. Total gasoline use is forecast to be down by 15 percent compared to 2019; and ethanol blending is forecast to be down 20.4 percent based on the blending economics from a forecast average price for regular gasoline of $1.58/gallon versus $2.72/gallon last year. The bigger hit to ethanol use comes in Q2, with a 27 percent drop year-to-year; blending is forecast to be down 13 percent in Q3 compared to the same period in 2019. Production is also forecast down dramatically through 20...
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.