December corn closed higher for a second session in a row, no doubt aided by the daily export sales reported by USDA. By contrast and since its recent high back on 18 July, both the September and November soybean contracts have closed lower each session but one. There was higher volume in corn, cattle, wheat, and soyoil. There were new contract lows in soymeal, SRW, and HRS, even as soymeal and HRS both closed higher. And there was a new contract high in feeder cattle, even as it closed lower for the session. We are still not at crop season bottoms, and it is a slow walk getting there. Reports USDA’s weekly Export Sales report showed old crop sales winding down. However, new crop corn s...
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.