USDA released its quarterly Hogs and Pigs report last Thursday and before the three-day market holiday. The total 1 March hog and pig inventory was 72.9 million head, 103 percent of March 2017 but only 99 percent of December 2017. This was in line with the pre-report estimates. Producers intend to farrow 3.08 million sows for the March-May quarter or 102 percent of the same quarter last year. Further, they intend to farrow 3.16 million sows for the June-August quarter or 101 percent of a year prior. Indeed, the pig crop was 32.3 million head, 104 percent of the same quarter last year. Moreover, pigs saved per litter were 10.58, which was a record for the December-February quarter and up from 10.43 the previous year. That alone will s...
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.