World Perspectives
livestock

Livestock Roundup: High Prices and China Persist

What a difference a year makes! No one will forget how out of balance cattle markets were in 2022 with margins steeply favoring the packer, while feedlots saw their margins shrink away into negative territory.  In fact, it was such a factor that we suffered through a year of misguided attempts to “fix” the market with all kinds of adjustments to cattle pricing.   However, in the past year, feedlot margins are up more than 1,300 percent, according to Sterling Beef Profit Tracker, going from $29.33/head in 2024 to $419.93/head last week. Last week’s highs were up from already high margins of $366.40/head the previous week and $278.73/head in mid-February. Packer margins, meanwhile, remained in the red with a -...

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feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Bears Resist WASDE Curveballs

U.S. crop growing weather looks near perfect. Even dry parts of Nebraska and northern Illinois have just received good relief rains. The rest of July is cooler and damp, perfect for pollination. The share of the corn crop rated Good/Excellent is 74 percent, and its 66 percent for soybeans. ...

soy-oilseeds

WASDE Soybeans - July 2025

USDA’s July 2025 outlook for U.S. soybeans is for increased ending stocks compared to last month: U.S. soybean crush for 2025/26 was raised 50 million bushels to 2.54 billion on the assumption that demand for soybean oil for biofuel would increase. The U.S. seasonal average farm price of...

feed-grains

WASDE Corn - July 2025

USDA’s July 2025 outlook for U.S. corn is a reduction in ending stocks from the June estimate of 1.75 billion bushels to 1.66 billion bushels. U.S. corn exports were increased 100 million bushels to 2.8 billion; If realized, those exports would be record high. The seasonal average farm pr...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Bears Resist WASDE Curveballs

U.S. crop growing weather looks near perfect. Even dry parts of Nebraska and northern Illinois have just received good relief rains. The rest of July is cooler and damp, perfect for pollination. The share of the corn crop rated Good/Excellent is 74 percent, and its 66 percent for soybeans. ...

soy-oilseeds

WASDE Soybeans - July 2025

USDA’s July 2025 outlook for U.S. soybeans is for increased ending stocks compared to last month: U.S. soybean crush for 2025/26 was raised 50 million bushels to 2.54 billion on the assumption that demand for soybean oil for biofuel would increase. The U.S. seasonal average farm price of...

feed-grains

WASDE Corn - July 2025

USDA’s July 2025 outlook for U.S. corn is a reduction in ending stocks from the June estimate of 1.75 billion bushels to 1.66 billion bushels. U.S. corn exports were increased 100 million bushels to 2.8 billion; If realized, those exports would be record high. The seasonal average farm pr...

wheat

WASDE Wheat - July 2025

USDA’s July 2025 outlook for U.S. wheat is for a 1 bushel per acre increase in average yield to 52.6 bushels per acre. The projection is for U.S. wheat production to increase 8 million bushels to 1,929 million bushels. However, the estimate for U.S. wheat exports is raised by 25 million b...

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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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