There have been changes to the 2018/19 corn balance sheet since our first look at the potential supply/demand outlook on 18 January. USDA reduced the export and ethanol forecasts by 75 million bushels and 25 million bushels, respectively, in the March WASDE. The result was a 100 million bushel increase in corn ending supplies to an estimated 1.835 billion bushels, although that is still down from 2.14 billion bushels in 2017/18. WPI is using a planted acre number of 91.1 million acres for 2019, up 2 million from 2018. Meanwhile, many analysts have been forecasting a 3-4 million acre increase. Those higher corn acreage estimates were based primarily on expectations that the U.S.-China trade dispute would cause soybean prices to collapse, wh...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, and the latest retail sales data indicate that spending remains robust despite inflation. In September, total retail and food service sales rose more than 6 percent year-over-year, with food service spending up 7 percent and...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
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.