The April WASDE featured fewer changes than expected with USDA remaining cautious about increasing U.S. demand expectations. The agency was similarly neutral the South American crops, where most analysts had been expecting production cuts. The market reaction to the April report was mixed with the soy complex ending lower, corn mostly unchanged, and wheat paring some of its significant pre-report gains. Funds were net buyers in wheat and corn on Friday, while selling across the board in the soy complex. USDA made mostly minor changes to the U.S. and world crop balance sheets in the April WASDE. World corn ending stocks fell 3.8 MMT, due largely to a 150-Mbu reduction in the U.S. carry-out. USDA’s forecast implies the smallest world c...
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.