World Perspectives
livestock

Livestock Round-Up: WASDE Livestock Outlook

Last week we noted the impact of Omicron on slaughter rates; as of today, cattle slaughter is up about 1 percent, hog slaughter is down about 3.5 percent, both compared to the same period last week. Both are down considerably from last year, however. Cattle slaughter is running 3.7 percent below and hog slaughter is 10.4 percent below last year for the same week  In the near term, it is unclear how long the lower slaughter will last, but once it does clear, cattle and hog prices should see a rally. In the longer run, yesterday’s WASDE increased the forecast for beef production from the December forecast, based on cattle placements in late 2021 and the first half of 2022, heavier slaughter weights, and higher cow culling. The yea...

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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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