At the recent Southern Association of State Departments of Agriculture (SASDA) meeting in Fort Worth, the counsel general of the Chinese Consulate in Houston, Li Qiangmin, addressed the current state of U.S.-China trade relations. He said that if they normalize, China will be a strong customer for beef over the long run. That doesn’t appear to be diplomatic happy talk. Overall, the beef import market in China is bullish. Through April, its total beef imports from all origins exceeded $2 billion in value, up more than 50 percent over the record set during the same period last year. The U.S. has about a 1 percent market share there, and USDA’s April export data indicates its beef exports to China grew 5 percent in volume from the...
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
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.