The CBOT was strictly focused on the August WASE in Friday’s trade. Price action before the USDA’s noon report featured quiet, weaker spread trade and wheat fell 11-17 cents while corn and soybean futures pushed higher. The report itself was within the range of pre-report estimates, but several points (e.g., U.S. corn yields and wheat ending stocks) were on the extremes of analysts’ estimates. That lent the report an air of holding surprises, even if most key figures were within the expected range. Perhaps the biggest reaction to the August WASDE, as is always the case with this report, is the fact there is large potential for change in future WASDEs, based on challenging growing conditions in the U.S., EU, and Argentina.&...
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.