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: 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.