As Gary Blumenthal mentioned in yesterday’s report, the Sacramento County Superior Court has delayed the implementation of Proposition 12 for 180 days. The rule was to go into effect on 1 January, but the implementing rules were not complete. The statute imposes civil and criminal penalties, and some packers were preparing to avoid the California market altogether given the risks. The delayed implementation certainly supports what was already a bullish outlook for hog prices in the first half of 2022. The market hog inventory is still tight as 2022 begins. As we reported on 23 December, farrowings from September to November were 3.01 million, or about 95 percent of a year earlier, and farrowing intentions for December to...
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
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.