Yesterday’s bump in the market was because USDA’s WASDE report was not as bearish as feared. Today’s jump is harder to explain - it seems miscalculated. Some say it was based on the prevented planting acres data, but the World Agricultural Outlook Board would have had those numbers when finalizing the WASDE. The “lockup” or closed-door meeting where WASDE numbers are finalized involves all cards on the table. The outcome is based on the best “facts” available and that includes the prevented planting numbers. The derecho impact was not included, but everyone knows that will not change the bottom-line numbers very much. Late today some were speculating it is the weather forecast. So today was b...
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.
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...