USDA’s 31 March reports containing its estimates of preliminary planting intentions and 1 March quarterly stocks provided a few surprises. The biggest surprise was the planting intentions for corn of 97 million acres which, if realized, would be the second largest U.S. planted corn acreage on record. It topped the average pre-report trade guess by nearly 3 million acres. It would exceed last year’s corn plantings by about 7 million acres. Most of the increased corn acreage would be in the heart of the corn belt from Ohio through South Dakota. This huge acreage, trend yield and normal growing season weather would produce close to 16 billion bu of corn and very bearish ending 2020/21 corn stocks of well over 3 billion bu. However...
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.