There were some significant changes in today's WASDE estimates for the soybean sector, and flooding in a key province of Argentina will likely impact planting intentions there. USDA Boosts U.S. Soy Production and Exports USDA once again surprised most analysts today by boosting its forecast for U.S. 2017 soybean production. The average forecast of analysts queried by Reuters indicated expectation that it would reduce the average yield from 49.4 bushels/acre to 48.8 bushels/acre and lower the crop from 4.381 billion bushels to 4.328 billion bushels. Instead, USDA raised its estimates for the average yield and total crop to 49.9 bushels/acre (3.356 MT/hectare) and 4.431 billion bushels (120.6 MMT), respectively. If realized, production woul...
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.