The malting barley sector was thrown two curve balls this year: the shutdown of the hospitality sector by COVID-19, and China imposing punitive tariffs on its typical supplier, Australia. However, neither development explains the recent uptick in prices given that sales typically occur in the late fall and early winter. Australia shifted its exports to India where the demand for craft beer is growing. The only other suppliers with the necessary sanitary certificates issued by Beijing are Canada, France and Ukraine. France shipped 111 KMT of malt barley to China in July and sales by Canada and Ukraine have been solid. The supply has not only been tightened by demand but a smaller planted area in Argentina combined with Australia diver...
What You Need to Know Today: Funds remain in control of the market, which means broadly bearish trade for the ag sector. Monday’s massive corn export sale to Mexico helped trigger some short covering and a bit of other end-user buying in corn, which could help stabilize the market. Wheat...
With less than 24 hours until Election Day, control of the Senate remains a wild card. Republicans and Democrats alike say they are poised to win control of the chamber in the new Congress that starts in January 2027. The House of Representatives is more of a lost cause for continued Republican...
Key Takeaways: U.S. hog and pork prices have declined sharply, with December lean hog futures ending October at $58.875/cwt and the pork cutout reaching its lowest level since January 2021. Seasonal increases in hog slaughter and pork production have contributed to price weakness, although the...
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.