The 2026 USDA Prospective Plantings Report is scheduled for release tomorrow. The report surveys farmer planting intentions for major crops, including corn, soybeans, and wheat. It also asks about 2025 planted and prevent-plant acres. This report gives the first real snapshot of what planted acreage could look like for the upcoming growing season. However, with the current fertilizer situation due to the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, actual planting could shift to more soybeans and less corn before the spring season is complete. Either way, fertilizer prices will switch some acres out of corn and into soybeans. A preview of the report is available from the annual Ag Outlook Forum in February. These estimates are not m...
What You Need to Know Today: The G7 agreed to release 100 million barrels of crude oil and fuel reserves over four months, with a substantial diesel release front-loaded into the first 20 days. The announcement initially pushed crude oil lower on Friday, although it later recovered a portion o...
In a recent social media post, R-CALF unveiled its latest cattle market plan: “contracts that bind producers before establishing a base price, then tie that price to future negotiated cash transactions, should be prohibited.” That proposal aligns with recent legislation by Represent...
Key Takeaways: The recent pearl-clutching from parts of the beef industry regarding the loss of the daily Kansas fed cattle negotiated trade pricing report is overwrought and ignores the fact that the direction was readily apparent. The shift away from negotiated trade has been well docu...
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.