World Perspectives
livestock

Livestock Roundup: Record Meat Production; Trade Breakthrough

Record Meat Production Red meat production hit a record high for April at 4.522 billion pounds, split almost evenly between beef at 2.262 billion pounds and pork at 2.692 billion pounds. It has reached 17.859 billion pounds so far in 2019, which is 102 percent of the same period in 2018. Broiler production at 13.969 billion pounds is 100.9 percent of the first four months of 2018.   Trade Breakthrough The U.S., Canada and Mexico reached a deal to lift the tariffs on steel imports from the latter two countries to the U.S. as well as the counter-tariffs on U.S. prepared beef products shipped to Canada and pork exported to Mexico. The agreement hinged on Canada and Mexico adopting new monitoring and enforcement measures to prevent s...

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livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins fell over $100/head for the second straight week to hit - $151/head, which is among the worst margins in the past decade. The culprit for weaker margins was an $11/cwt pullback in the Choice cutout and other beef values while fed cattle prices were steady/slightly higher. Pa...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Grains and Livestock Take Diverging Paths

Grain and oilseed markets pulled back to start the week after favorable showers fell across the U.S. over the weekend. The moisture revived crop prospects and offered a meaningful buffer ahead of some heat that will build over parts of the Midwest this week. The weather outlook was enough to st...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

WPI Crop Progress and Conditions App (Updated 21 July)

Update for 28 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where o...

livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins fell over $100/head for the second straight week to hit - $151/head, which is among the worst margins in the past decade. The culprit for weaker margins was an $11/cwt pullback in the Choice cutout and other beef values while fed cattle prices were steady/slightly higher. Pa...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Grains and Livestock Take Diverging Paths

Grain and oilseed markets pulled back to start the week after favorable showers fell across the U.S. over the weekend. The moisture revived crop prospects and offered a meaningful buffer ahead of some heat that will build over parts of the Midwest this week. The weather outlook was enough to st...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

WPI Crop Progress and Conditions App (Updated 21 July)

Update for 28 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where o...

Ten Days and Counting

Outside markets are counting on trade deals or another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) come 1 August. Since the 7 July announcement of the small window to negotiate trade deals with Washington, The Dow is down 0.17 percent, but the S&P 500 is up 1.22 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq has...

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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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