General Comments Agricultural markets were wary of what transpired in the world's financial markets the past two days and traded very tentatively. Trade was lower overnight and early today. The worries this time started with Fed Chairman Bernanke saying it might be time to slow the "QE" since the economy feels somewhat better. When you take the candy away from the market, it makes those holding onto the candy nervous. The second issue was another round of concern about what's happening with China's economy. The latest Private Mortgage Index (PMI) was very weak. China's government injected a big chunk of liquidity into their system overnight and that sparked talk of a recovery in world equity markets today. It made a difference for...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.