These are the kind of times that show why grain farming is such a risky business. After several years of grain and soy prices being pressured by very big crops and burdensome supplies both in the U.S. and globally, the 2019/20 crop cycle has seen farmers buffeted by the impact of excessive precipitation and flooding that delayed spring planting by two to four weeks in many cases. As an example of weather risk to an extreme, wet conditions resulted in a large amount of farmland that simply did not get planted. Grain and soy markets staged an impressive rally based on the big spring planting problems. Estimates are that U.S. farmers were unable to plant more than 19 million acres of cropland, an unprecedented amount. FSA data shows that 11.2...
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: Dry bulk markets remain mixed with Capesize vessels seeing continued pressure from weaker demand while fixtures and rate strength gradually increases towards the smaller vessel classes. Tanker markets are pulling back from their recent highs as tonnage moves out of the Mid...
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.