World Perspectives

Paying War Reparations

A major power conceding in a war usually takes many years and horrific losses. The undeclared war by the U.S. against North Vietnam lasted 20 years and took the lives of over 58,000 Americans as well as more than a million Southeast Asians. The Cold War lasted more than four decades and only ended due to the economic implosion of the Soviet Union. Trump’s trade war with China will similarly not end soon. This is in part practical since retreat means no change in China’s state-run mercantilist behaviors. Thus, the only real question is how to best mitigate the war’s cost. The Trump administration will reportedly write another check to agricultural producers, reportedly up to $20 billion, which is in addition to the $12 bil...

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Livestock Industry Margins

The pork industry saw production margins improve last week as strong pork demand lifted prices for both the pork cutout and physical hogs. Pork packer margins ticked slightly higher as gains in the pork market outpaced those in the hog market while higher lean hog futures and a slight dip in fe...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Cattle Hit New Records while Wheat Hits New Lows; Planting in Focus

The CBOT was mostly lower to start the week with expectations of favorable planting progress in this afternoon’s Crop Progress report creating much of the pressure. Wheat was the big loser for the day with favorable weather in the major growing regions prompting a strong wave of selling f...

Quick Hits

Canadian Elections: Canada is going to the polls today. Earlier in the year, the Liberal Party was out of favor in Canada, but Trump’s talk of the 51st State has changed the dynamics of the election. Canada has six time zones, so the final results will be in late tonight.  SCP Safegu...

livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

The pork industry saw production margins improve last week as strong pork demand lifted prices for both the pork cutout and physical hogs. Pork packer margins ticked slightly higher as gains in the pork market outpaced those in the hog market while higher lean hog futures and a slight dip in fe...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Cattle Hit New Records while Wheat Hits New Lows; Planting in Focus

The CBOT was mostly lower to start the week with expectations of favorable planting progress in this afternoon’s Crop Progress report creating much of the pressure. Wheat was the big loser for the day with favorable weather in the major growing regions prompting a strong wave of selling f...

Quick Hits

Canadian Elections: Canada is going to the polls today. Earlier in the year, the Liberal Party was out of favor in Canada, but Trump’s talk of the 51st State has changed the dynamics of the election. Canada has six time zones, so the final results will be in late tonight.  SCP Safegu...

Hard Hit with Benefits; American Consumerism; AI’s Trump Trade Solution

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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.

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