Before we get to the 800-pound bear (war), let’s cover some market basics. This would be an extraordinary market situation even without facing down a very bad bear. Brazil’s soybean exports have begun to increase and ANEC says they will hit 11.7 MMT in March. But China is buying a lot of U.S. soybeans in the gut of Brazil’s marketing period for a reason. The drought in Brazil is enabling harvesting to advance quickly. It is at 44 percent, versus 25 percent this time a year ago. But soybeans in Brazil are grown on the equivalent of 76,000 football fields. Some are in excellent shape, but many this year are average at best. Among the worst is Parána where yields are down 74 percent, and the quality is mostly po...
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.