The biggest news today was the announcement that China will purchase 25 MMT of soybeans per year for the next three years and 12 MMT of soybeans this year. The announcement was made in anticipation of a new trade deal. President Trump and China’s President Xi met for an hour and 45 minutes in Busan, Korea, a meeting declared by Trump, "on a scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12." Trump added, “Farmers should immediately go out and buy more land and larger tractors. I would like to thank President Xi for this!” That advice may be premature, and over exaggerated, but it captures the spirit of the coming to terms. The amount of soybean purchases, 25 MMT, is 920 million bus...
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.