Market are shifting more into neutral now that weather across the Corn Belt and northern Plains is finally starting to turn spring-like and even summerish after one of the coldest spring seasons on record. The problem this year is that these conditions didn’t arrive until this last week of April. Driving about 200 miles south from Fargo this past weekend, it was evident that not a wheel has turned. The southern half of this drive was through the area that was hammered with two feet of snow the previous weekend. Fields were still covered in some areas, and farmyards and tree rows were deep in snow. It will be another two to three weeks before tractors move much in these areas even with temperatures approaching the 70s and little or no...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent said the U.S. and Iran could “today or tomorrow” reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Despite the Secretary’s claims, an attack on a vessel off the Omani coast suggests plenty of risk remains in forming a lo...
Beef packer margins slipped modestly for the first time in four weeks, declining $15/head to -$78 as fed cattle prices firmed while boxed beef values continued to weaken. The Choice cutout eased another $2.63/cwt to $364.69, while dressed cattle prices fell only $2.76/cwt to $362.25/cwt, limiti...
Key Takeaways: Offal represents an important segment of global meat trade by adding value to underutilized portions of livestock carcasses and improving overall resource efficiency. Strong export demand for products such as pork variety meats and chicken feet allows processors to maximize carc...
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.