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.
Key Market Developments Macro: Playing or Trading “Truth or Dare” We’ve entered the “truth or dare” phase of this market — where conviction takes a backseat and headlines drive direction. At any given moment, the narrative shifts: progress in negotiations on...
Cow-calf margins hit all-time record highs in 2025 as the industry benefited from the downstream impacts of record-breaking beef demand and the smallest beef cattle herd in decades. As WPI readers will know well, the resulting supply crunch boosted cattle prices across the production landscape...
Russian Grain Markets: 16–20 March 2026 During the second week of February, the Russian grains market showed a sharp divergence between domestic and export trends. The domestic market was slightly bullish but overall remained stable. In contrast, export market trading in RUB was mostly be...