There’s still more information to digest among the details of Tuesday’s January Cattle Report (see WPI’s coverage here). Cattle on feed for 1 January for feedlots with 1,000 head-plus were down 3 percent per the monthly USDA report; this week’s semi-annual cattle inventory report estimates all cattle on feed on all size feed yards. Netting out the large feed yards, cattle being fed at smaller farmer/feeder operations were down about 7 percent compared to January 2022. Perhaps a combination of drought and high feed costs. The beef cow herd at 28.918 million head is down 4 percent from last year and hit its lowest since 1962 (28.691 million head) which is an attention grabber in and of itself, not to ment...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
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...
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.