With the Labor Day holiday behind us it is timely to look at the hog and pork market. Slaughter the week before Labor Day was down 4.3 percent – though it was still 0.8 percent above the same week last year. And this week’s slaughter will be down on the holiday shortened week; so far this week, week to date daily slaughter is about 2.5 percent below last year compared to cumulative slaughter for the year being up 1.4 percent. Additionally, weights have been down for the past couple of weeks, about four pounds lighter than the same period in 2022. That is tightening up the pork market before moving into seasonally higher slaughter in a couple of weeks through October. If weights are lighter that will offset some of the hig...
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) enters its mandated six-year review on 1 July. The original intent of the review is outlined in Article 34.7, which obligates members to: Provide recommendations and decide on appropriate actions. Extend the USMCA for another 16 years and meet aga...
Key Market Insights Geopolitical Limbo: Geopolitical risk remained a key driver across global commodity markets today. President Trump stated that the Iran memorandum of understanding is not yet final and warned that military action could resume if negotiations fail. Both sides continue w...
Key Takeaways: Drought remains a major threat to global agricultural production, particularly in regions with limited rainfall and growing water scarcity. Commercially available drought-tolerant traits in corn, soybeans, and wheat have generally delivered modest yield improvements, limiting th...
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.