The September producer and consumer price indices were released this week, and inflation continues to be an issue, as we discussed Monday in conjunction with the jobs report. Commodities played a big part in the producer price index (PPI) increase, specifically under the category of unprocessed goods for intermediate demand (these are the costs of commodities to processors). Ag and food items increasing include corn, hay, oilseeds, wheat, and fresh vegetables. The October WASDE likely means this category is not going to come down soon. Notably, milk and slaughter hogs declined as input costs declined in September. For processed goods for intermediate demand, or wholesale intermediate commodities for further processing,...
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.