Except for lean hog futures, the CBOT and CME markets were higher on Tuesday in a combination of bullish factors. The day’s strength started after the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump told aides he is willing to end hostilities in the Middle East even if the Strait of Hormuz remains mostly closed. That sent waves of hope through macroeconomic markets and pulled crude oil lower, with this reaction helping boost ag markets. Then, of course, there were the USDA reports: the quarterly Grain Stocks and the Prospective Plantings issues. As detailed below, the Grain Stocks report was mostly neutral for the major grain and oilseed markets with high stocks coupled with strong Q2 demand, which allowed markets to focus on the ac...
What You Need to Know Today: Oil prices surged today following reports of tanker attacks off the coast of Saudi Arabia by Houthi rebels and renewed U.S. threats to escalate military strikes against Iran, heightening concerns over potential disruptions to Middle East energy supplies. Brent crud...
Key Takeaways: The latest UN data shows solid progress reducing global hunger and food insecurity. The geography of hunger-affected people has shifted substantially, however, and Africa is now the most affected region. To understand why hunger patterns have shifted and what policy option...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report for 1 July will be released tomorrow. Analysts’ pre-report consensus estimates are for the total inventory on feed to be 102.2 percent of last year. Those estimates imply an on-feed inventory of 11.327 million head. If accurate, that would be the...
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.