The acreage numbers used weren’t surprising. The talk over most of the winter has been that U.S. farmers want to plant more corn. There might be some external factors, though, that hold corn acres closer to unchanged from 2015 than up 2 million acres.Thank goodness for the USDA’s Outlook Forum this week as it provided some fresh numbers to look at, discuss and write about even though the outcome was well anticipated by the trade. Market analysts are desperately waiting for the end of winter around the Northern Hemisphere in the hope that something will bring any level of excitement back to the markets. There was nothing in yesterday’s supply/demand projections to indicate that might happen any time soon. The yield estimates used on the supp...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, and the latest retail sales data indicate that spending remains robust despite inflation. In September, total retail and food service sales rose more than 6 percent year-over-year, with food service spending up 7 percent and...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
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.