It appears that there are bankers now offering farmers advice on what crops to plant along with their decisions regarding operating lines of credit.A call came in over the weekend from a merchandising manager with one of the major U.S. grain companies. It was in response to last Friday’s WPI analysis on USDA’s Outlook Forum and how the acreage numbers can still change because a large percentage of producers still had not finalized 2016 operating lines of credit. They might intend or want to plant more corn, but their lenders could have the final deciding vote in that decision. We had quite a lengthy conversation.Specifically, this merchandiser called to discuss a large farm customer who had previously contracted 2,000 acres of 2016 canola t...
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.