Pickpocket Economics Some U.S. farm groups are clamoring for more subsidies from U.S. taxpayers, but they are likely to get a less favorable reaction from the new Congress. U.S. government farm payments will hit $17.2 billion this year, the highest level since 2006. American farmers are receiving $9.8 billion in compensation for the adverse effects of Mr. Trump’s trade war, plus there are plans for more subsidies to offset crop damage from hurricanes and wildfires. The trade war has not helped, but it has not been the cause of soft commodity markets. The nearby soybean contract is down 7 percent from a year earlier, but the nearby corn contract is 5 percent higher, and SRW is 14 percent more valuable. Livestock Challenges E...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.