Year-to date-pork production is down from expectations, and chicken production is off to a fast start. Where’s the Pork? Pork packer margins have dropped precipitously from 1 January to date as the chart below shows, based mostly on the increase in hog prices as cutout values have remained steady to slightly up.This is somewhat curious as the swine herd has been large and growing, and prices should be more bearish than on the bullish trend they have been exhibiting. The following table details the 1 December Hogs and Pigs Report. Slaughter in the first eight weeks of this year should be right in the midst of the 50-119 pound weight category of pigs on 1 December, which the table shows was up 4 percent over last year.However, the higher in...
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.