Markets remained under pressure today amid the scare of a recession and a drop in demand. The fear is somewhat overstated in grains and oilseeds since recessions tend to impact banks, manufacturers, and consumer discretionary industries - not so much non-discretionary items like food. Moreover, any recession is expected to be a mild one given an objective view of the balance sheets for banks and consumers. In fact, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told Congress we have turned the corner on inflation, presumably because of last week’s large hike in the interest rate. The exceptional factors remain China’s imbalances and COVID practices, plus Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the former bearish for ags and the latter u...
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: 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...