General Comments An improving Midwest weather outlook, especially in the 10- to 15-day slot, lent a weaker tone to grain and soy markets overnight and again during the day session. Although more rains are forecast for this week, the weather models revert to drier and warmer weather this coming weekend and next week, which should allow corn planting to get underway in many areas just before the end of April. USDA reported that just 4 percent of corn was planted by 21 April compared with the average of 16 percent. Limited progress is seen for this week, which could leave USDA's next report on corn planting as of 28 April at a record low level for the date. With soil moisture replenished, there is no doubt that when conditions are right, U...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.