Yesterday was a macro “risk -off” day as fears that currency and debt issues for emerging economies might spread widely enough to jar world economic growth. Commodities were hard hit by concerns that an economic slowdown would shrink demand for raw materials. Today turned into a “risk-back-on” day as weak currencies strengthened, world stock markets turned up and the worst-hit commodities like copper and crude oil recovered. Into this more favorable environment came an announcement in Beijing that a Chinese delegation, headed by the vice minister of commerce, would go to Washington next week for trade discussions with U.S. officials. The Chinese described the intended meeting as “high-level.” U.S. officia...
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.