From a strictly fundamental perspective, the U.S. and world supply/demand balance appears to be quite bearish. To be sure, there is record or near-record demand, but this is being met with bigger crops that are building stocks to historic levels.It has become a cliché to describe the world as being awash in grain and oilseeds in 2016/17, and yet it is a description that is hard to avoid. USDA’s December WASDE of 9 December makes that point rather emphatically. The world holds enormous supplies, and the estimated volumes have been growing in each of the recent monthly WASDE reports. World wheat production for 2016/17 is put at 751.3 MMT, world coarse grain production is estimated at 1,329.4 MMT, and world oilseed production is called at 644...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, and the latest retail sales data indicate that spending remains robust despite inflation. In September, total retail and food service sales rose more than 6 percent year-over-year, with food service spending up 7 percent and...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
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.