Holiday Season Starts Strong With a pipeline full of protein, seasonal holiday demand started strong with Thanksgiving. As of 31 October, cold storage stocks of turkey were lower than year-ago levels after the second consecutive month of drawdowns. The total pounds in freezers were 96 percent of last year and 79 percent of the previous month. Total red meat in cold storage was 99 percent of both the previous month and October 2017, driven by reductions in pork inventories that left those supplies down 3 percent from September and 5 percent lower than a year ago. Frozen pork was 97 percent of September and 95 percent of last year. Bellies were drawn down to 88 percent of last year’s inventory. Beef, however, was 102 percent of both a...
The corn and soy complex closed higher, with the wheat market mixed, as winter wheat closed up but spring wheat and livestock ended lower. Part of the strength for corn and soybeans may have been a weather premium, as crop planting has started out fast but warm weather has been slow to develop...
Real GDP grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026, slightly below the consensus expectation of 2.3 percent but above the 0.5 percent growth in Q4 2025. The GDP number matches the average annualized pace of growth since the peak back in late 2007, right before the Financial P...
Reflect for a moment on what you eat. There is a lot of advice out there in the ether about what you should eat, but really, what do you currently eat and how much? The good people at the USDA have some data for you, to help you answer that question. USDA says that we eat quite a bit of meat. L...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.