The value of hogs has fallen 15 percent over the past year and Quebec, Canada’s largest pig producing province, is trying to shed animals. The plan is to spend C$80 million to reduce the output of animals by 1 million head. But the problem may be bigger than that. Quebec has 53.8 percent of the Canadian pig farms but only produces 31 percent of the total pig crop. At a time when livestock operations are consolidating to achieve economies of scale, Quebec has a long way to go. Quebec has the advantage of producing the second largest amount of corn and soybeans for feed, and Ontario is adjacent with the largest feed output. Still, the province lacks efficiency on the farm and that impacts profitability at the processors. Though n...
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.
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...