USDA/NASS cut the U.S. corn and yield estimates by 1.8 bushel/acre (BPA) and 1.0 BPA, respectively. Those reductions were well below the average minor changes expected by the trade. This resulted in production estimates that were also well below the average guesses reported by wire services. Clearly, some negative impact of adverse weather on mature crops prior to harvest was accounted for in those estimates. After making adjustments to corn demand, USDA forecast that ending 2018/19 U.S. stocks would fall to 1.736 billion bushels, down 77 million from October and over 400 million bushels lower than ending 2017/18 stocks. The smaller estimated soybean production was more than covered by a reduction of 160 million bushels in total demand (low...
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
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.