After a few weeks out of the market, China purchased 77,700 MT of U.S. pork last week. That makes it the number three destination (behind Mexico and Korea) for pork exports in 2019. Export sales totaled 90,700 MT, including to Korea (3,600 MT), Chile (2,900 MT), Japan (2,200 MT), Australia (1,800 MT) and Canada (1,100). The news lifted the lean hog futures contracts across the board with the June contract opening at $99.45/cwt after bottoming out at $74.65/cwt as recently as 19 March. These levels haven’t been seen since 2014 and are up around 60 percent on the year. However, as WPI has cautioned, the trade uncertainty and lack of transparency on the African swine fever (ASF) issues in China have made the market a bit of a rollercoas...
What You Need to Know Today: As was widely expected, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points to a target range of 3.75–4.00 percent, its first rate increase since 2023, as policymakers respond to persistent inflation pressures. The Fed also signaled that additi...
Key Takeaways: USDA data access is equal; the ability to use it is not. Larger operations can afford experts who turn public reports into business decisions. Analytical capacity is the true advantage. Forecasts matter only when converted into profit, purchasing, and risk-management decisions...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.