Thanks to USDA’s effort to project the effect of the Chinese tariffs on the U.S. soybean supply/demand for 2017/18 and 2018/19 as well as the expected weather-related production changes for various export competitors, this was easily the most anticipated July WASDE in many years. The trade expected the report’s tone to generally be bearish, but the estimates and projections were mixed in terms of market impact. Given the tariff situation, the outlook for soybeans could hardly avoid being bearish with the inevitable projections for a big crop, lower exports and a big jump in ending stocks. On balance, however, the WASDE appeared to be neutral on grains to pessimistic observers and at least somewhat bullish to those more optimisti...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump suspended the planned attacks on Iran and announced that the pieces for a framework for peace were in place in a weekend social media post. Iran, however, later said no efforts were underway to conduct negotiations with the U.S., though Oman indicat...
Key Takeaways: E15 expansion would support corn and ethanol demand by increasing domestic biofuel consumption and reducing reliance on petroleum-based fuels. Year-round E15 has gained bipartisan momentum, but the policy remains in legislative limbo as lawmakers continue to negotiate provisions...
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.