The CBOT was mixed to start the week with just two full trading days before the March WASDE report. There was a good bit of pre-report positioning that occurred on Monday but trading volumes were still surprisingly heavy, except for corn. The major surprise of the CBOT continues to be soymeal, which is showing no signs of slowing its rally. Soymeal hit new highs this afternoon and carried the soybean market higher too. Wheat futures remained under pressure from fund selling and corn was caught somewhere in between. All eyes are now on South America’s near-term weather prospects and the March WASDE and trade at the CBOT will likely be a choppy, range-bound affair heading into the report. The weekly Export Inspections report feat...
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.