General Comments Markets opened much stronger than expected Sunday afternoon. The following statement from a private weather forecaster accurately sums up the strength: "U.S. crop prospects are still poor no matter how you look at it. Heat and dryness will continue to be in the forecast through the next two weeks, and weekend precipitation failed to bring enough relief to change the situation."Weekend rains were less than expected in actual totals and coverage and the extended models today look warm to hot and dry, and that will take us to 1 August. If little or no rain falls across the Corn Belt by 1 August, it will mean corn yields will continue to decline and soybean yields will be in big jeopardy. There was a real mixture of other...
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.