Herd expansion still relies on the profitability of the cow-calf sector, which is easy to forget with record cattle prices. Retaining heifers, though, is a slower route than keeping brood cows, and various factors including high beef prices have led to significant cow culling. Elements of Beef Expansion The Sterling Beef Profit Tracker shows that feedlot margins are $194.24 per head and packer margins are $49.39 per head on record beef cutout values. That was almost a doubling of the previous week's margins and a benefit of strong export demand. However, herd expansion still relies on the profitability of the cow-calf sector, which is easy to forget with record cattle prices. Feed costs are certainly down. However, profitability, especial...
What You Need to Know Today: Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans continued to accelerate, with USDA reporting another 558 KMT sold to China and 236 KMT to unknown destinations. Combined with sales announced Wednesday and Thursday, the latest purchases bring the three-day total to approximately...
Key Takeaways: With the fall calf run now upon us, producers are finally getting a glimpse of what their realized profits will be for 2026. Some producers may have already obtained a strong estimate of 2026 revenues, especially if calves were forward sold in, for example, the mid-summer...
As fall begins, wild migratory birds are starting their seasonal migration. That has the industry and government officials worried about the potential spread, again, of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Some members of Congress have called for the United States to be prepared for a pote...
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.