The beef and cattle market is now past the milestone 4th of July holiday, between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends that define the high demand season. Beef demand has held up so far and so has cattle supply, perhaps more than otherwise would have been expected. The last cattle on feed report showed on feed inventories at 100 percent of last year. The value of 90 percent lean beef was 30 percent higher from the week before Memorial Day 2024 through the 4th of July compared to the same period last year. Of course, that has less to do with fed cattle supplies and is more reflective of significantly lower cow slaughter – including both beef and dairy cows. Cow slaughter was down 4.5 percent in May and down 12.5 percent for Janua...
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.