USDA will release its Cattle on Feed report tomorrow; the pre-report consensus of analysts’ estimates is for the inventory of cattle on feed as of 1 October to be 99.7 percent of last year; September placements and marketings are expected to be 95.8 and 102 percent respectively of last year’s totals. 10242024dj.jpg 38.45 KBAs always, the range for placement forecasts is the widest, as it is the most difficult to predict, and that degree of difficulty is amplified in the current market. Notably, placements typically increase during the fall run starting in September and through October, especially in the north when cattle come off summer grass. In the south many cattle typically find their way onto pastures after weaning before being pl...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. and Chinese officials are expected to discuss agriculture and non-tariff trade barriers ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington later this month, potentially opening the door to additional U.S. agricultural purchases or improved marke...
The U.S. will observe Labor Day on Monday, 7 September. U.S. markets and the WPI office will be closed that day. The next edition of Ag Perspectives will be published Tuesday, 8 September...
Key Takeaways: Drought and changes to the multi-year trend in cow slaughter and retention have the potential to dramatically alter beef trim supplies and pricing, and WPI specifically models three different drought scenarios for fall 2026. Based on our models, WPI expects 90 percent lean...
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.