The nature of agricultural markets is to always look ahead, and USDA's 1 March reports, especially the planting intentions, that will be released this Thursday symbolize the annual transition from old crop to new.31 March will see what arguably will be the most important array of reports from USDA since January’s final 2015/16 production estimates and 1 December quarterly stocks. At midday Thursday, it will release its initial estimates of U.S. farmers’ planting intentions for 2016 spring seeded crops along with the 1 March quarterly stocks estimates. These reports are always issued annually at the end of March, and they usually represent that point in time when the market’s attention transitions from old crop to the upcoming new crop cycle...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.