World Perspectives

Happy New Year – The Election Cycle has Started

It is 2024, and the upcoming Presidential and Congressional elections will start to cast a shadow over policy debates and timelines in Washington. For context, below is a brief recap of what’s at stake on Capitol Hill for the rest of this year – and getting past the short term hurdles.    The key short-term issues include meeting the funding deadlines to keep the government operating, which means having appropriations in place by 19 January and 2 February, depending on the agencies to be funded. At this point, if the 12 various agency appropriations bills are not finished, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has indicated he would not support another short-term stop gap spending bill and would instead support a c...

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feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

WPI Crop Progress and Conditions App (Updated 27 April)

Update for 6 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where ob...

livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins improved to -$100/head last week, up $28 from the prior week as the Choice cutout stabilized following its brief post-Easter decline while fed cattle prices eased modestly. The cutout firmed to $384/cwt, while fed cattle prices slipped to $246/cwt, allowing packer margins to...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

CFTC COT Report Analysis

Friday’s CFTC report showed funds adding to net long position across the major ag futures contracts after a two week break as deteriorating negotiations in the Middle East and the emergence of weather concerns triggered risk-on buying. Funds bought 40,000 contracts (4.7 percent) to their...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

WPI Crop Progress and Conditions App (Updated 27 April)

Update for 6 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where ob...

livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins improved to -$100/head last week, up $28 from the prior week as the Choice cutout stabilized following its brief post-Easter decline while fed cattle prices eased modestly. The cutout firmed to $384/cwt, while fed cattle prices slipped to $246/cwt, allowing packer margins to...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

CFTC COT Report Analysis

Friday’s CFTC report showed funds adding to net long position across the major ag futures contracts after a two week break as deteriorating negotiations in the Middle East and the emergence of weather concerns triggered risk-on buying. Funds bought 40,000 contracts (4.7 percent) to their...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Summary of Futures

Jul 26 Corn closed at $4.6925/bushel, up $0.0575 from yesterday's close.  Jul 26 Wheat closed at $6.2975/bushel, up $0.13 from yesterday's close.  Jul 26 Soybeans closed at $11.92/bushel, up $0.135 from yesterday's close.  Jul 26 Soymeal closed at $327.8/short ton, up $8.7 from y...

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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.

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