The big news for Monday’s ag market trade wasn’t the U.S.-EU trade deal, but rather continued favorable weather in the U.S. Midwest that will boost corn and soybean yield potential to record or near-record levels. The weather has private analysts boosting yield expectations by several bushels per acre and, consequently, adding to the U.S. supply outlook. That dynamic drove corn and soybean futures lower to start the week while the wind down of the wheat harvest left CBOT and KCBT futures mostly sideways. The big moves for the day again came from the cattle markets, where bullish USDA data prompted another round of strong fund and spec buying. While the weather was the primary focus for the day, the market continues to look...
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: Headlines emerging from negotiations between President Trump and President Xi were relatively limited, with a more substantive announcement expected Monday. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer indicated that additional details related to agricultural trade cou...
The heat of summer is now transitioning into more moderate temperatures, and the next two months have the busiest marketing periods of the year for replacement cattle. Weather always influences the replacement cattle market, and the primary grain belt in the Southern Plains, where many cattle a...
Key Takeaways: Diesel accounts for about 64 percent of U.S. farm fuel spending. For farmers, the pressing question is what a higher price adds to each field operation. Iowa farm diesel averaged $5.50/gallon in September, compared with the $2.89/gallon Iowa State assumed for its February machin...