The rally of grain and soy futures prices marches on in a manner not seen since last summer. Again, the charge has been led by soyoil with the May contract up another 42 points to close above the 34.00 mark. General Comments Per the months of rumors and our Common Thread piece of 24 March, China formally announced today that it was eliminating its high purchase (support) price on corn in favor of a system of direct payments to farmers, although many details are lacking. This should create a much greater degree of market orientation to domestic feed grain values. The Chinese government is now free to move ahead with auctions of corn from its enormous reserve stocks. Rumors are that it wants to move 40-50 MMT of older stocks with deteriorat...
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.