Searching for a bullish wheat story over several months has been challenging. There was a six-week rally in wheat last June and July, but futures have dropped back to new contract lows in the past few weeks. Much smaller crops in several major exporting countries were offset by the mammoth Russian crop. Russia can’t satisfy all of the world’s wheat demand, but the market hasn’t figured that out yet. This week’s increase in Canada’s wheat production estimate was another bearish factor that killed the recent, very small mini-rally. As luck would have it, a bullish wheat story did emerge in the “Commodity Corner” section of the 27 November issue of Barron’s. The recommendation in the article is...
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.