General Comments Earlier this spring, corn and soybean futures markets became worried about tight old crop supplies that were being eaten into by strong domestic and export demand. It began to appear that that the 31 August corn carryout would be drawn down to a minimal pipeline quantity, and that ending soybean supplies on 31 August would be smaller than previously thought. Old crop supply concerns pushed old crop/new crop futures inverses sharply wider. July/November soybeans moved to about a $1.25 premium for July, and the July/December corn spread reached close to a $1.00 premium for July.Then came USDA's May WASDE. To the market's surprise, USDA left its estimated corn carryout unchanged at 851 million bu instead of lowering it belo...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.