USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist provided a look at its initial 10-year baseline projections for 2018-2027 today, which will be updated and expanded in February in conjunction with USDA’s annual Outlook Forum. These numbers are based on trend lines, judgements and assumptions, including the expectation that there will be no significant economic or political disruptions during the next decade. We will have more to say about the baseline projections later, but they offer no comfort to producers or anyone wanting to be bullish on corn and soybeans. The latter are both forecast be planted on 91 million acres in 2018. Meanwhile, all wheat acreage in 2018/19 is pegged at 45 million acres, the lowest it has been since records have...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, and the latest retail sales data indicate that spending remains robust despite inflation. In September, total retail and food service sales rose more than 6 percent year-over-year, with food service spending up 7 percent and...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
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.