The overall economy is ready for a federal funds rate hike, which will be an impact on farm income that is already down with crop prices and debt that is starting to rise again.he Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FMOC) meets tomorrow with much market speculation as to whether the federal funds rate will be increased. Its target rate was raised in December 2015 to 0.25-0.50 percent from 0.00-0.25, which had been in place since 2008. That was the first increase since 2006, and the expectation last December was that the Fed would again raise rates by a similar amount two-four times in 2016. This has not occurred to date, but tomorrow’s meeting is one of three left for the year with the others scheduled for 1-2 November and 13-1...
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.