Corn Argentina’s corn harvest continued at full speed and reached 90 percent of the expected harvested area. Despite rains that fell last week, the weekly progress was still near 9 percent. At the same time, farmers remain strong sellers and the market has been dynamic. In July alone, producers sold near 2.5 MMT. With exporters having already purchased 33 MMT (versus 32.5 MMT of export declarations), it will be important for the government to increase the exportable balance (currently set at 36 MMT) so that sales do not lose speed and local prices are not depressed. Sooner or later, it is likely the government will increase the permit volume, but they are equally likely to do so by releasing small-volume quotas to maintain con...
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.