The corn bulls have been hoping that the Pro Farmer crop tour will reveal USDA to be a liar. The crop voyeurs are seeing some yields below the its estimates but also some that are higher. Either way, their observations will not change USDA’s numbers. In fact, those could stay roughly the same until more definitive groundwork is done by the agency in October. That will seem like an opportunity, but there is always the chance for surprises along the way – look what happened in the cattle market this week. Weather is perpetually a wild card. Australia certainly is getting its fill of unfavorable dryness, which could also return to the eastern U.S. Corn Belt in the five-10 day outlook. First, however, there is a chance that region...
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.