Markets were lower overnight, and that trend continued into the day session. One word that described today’s market action was weather, which is looking much better across the U.S. than a week ago. It will be warmer and drier, and that means farmers will get the planters rolling. A later start than normal isn’t as much of a problem as in the past because of farmers’ ability to plant very quickly. It has often been said that they can now plant the entire state of Iowa’s corn in a week. Planting spring wheat is even faster because of the evolution of the air seeder. The issue today was the weak U.S. equity markets. Crude oil and the U.S. dollar were both mixed. Corn FUTURES Chatter today in the feed grains...
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.