Last week, three Iowa Members of the House of Representatives – Representatives Cindy Axne, Abby Finkenauer and Dave Loebsack, all Democrats – introduced a companion bill to legislation introduced by Iowa’s Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst that would require packers to buy 50 percent of all cattle from the spot cash market to be delivered within 14 days (the so-called 50/14 bill). The current national average of cash market transactions is between 20 to 25 percent of cattle marketed, though it varies in different parts of the country. By definition, the 50/14 rule would reduce other forms of procuring cattle, including forward contracts, various formula-based contracts, and grid pricing which applies prem...
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.