Despite bearish prices and long-term weather forecasts for U.S. crops, farmers’ attitudes are not bad. Re-energized with a focus on basic farm management and cost control, farmers are ready to match the awesome production of 2016.The winter farm meeting season is quickly drawing to a close as farmers almost everywhere are now solidly in “spring fever” mode. Planting equipment is being tuned up, final planting decisions are being made and, in some cases, farmers are adding or subtracting land from their operations. The 2016/17 winter farmer meeting season was, as you would expect, rather subdued because net farm income was dropping like a rock. Farmers are more interested in looking for ways to conserve cash, rather than spend it. Farmers’ b...
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.