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livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

U.S. meat packer margins fell further last week as beef and, to a lesser extent pork, values contracted while animal procurement costs remain high. WPI’s models estimate beef packers lost $145/head last week, which is the second-largest weekly loss since our models began in 2010. Pork packers continue to see small but profitable margins and pork demand remains moderately strong and heavier carcass weights are adding to sellable product volumes. Cattle feeders saw placement margins fall last week as live cattle futures slipped lower and while feeder cattle prices remain high. Closeout margins from southern Plains feedlots also dipped on lower fed cattle prices and higher feeder cattle purchase and feed costs. The hog producer sector sa...

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feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Export Sales

Export Sales and Shipments for March 21-27, 2025. Wheat: Net sales of 340,000 metric tons (MT) for 2024/2025 were up noticeably from the previous week and up 40 percent from the prior 4-week average. Export shipments of 499,600 MT were up 17 percent from the previous week and 33 percent from th...

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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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