Back when the U.S. was the major supplier of wheat, corn and soybeans in the world market, currency relationships had only a marginal impact on the volumes of its grain exports. Times have changed.The U.S. dollar is the principal currency of world trade, the benchmark against which other currencies are measured. As everyone knows, it has also been on a roll. The U.S. Dollar Index measures its comparative strength against a basket of other major currencies. Since mid-2011, the index has gained about 34 percent, which is a huge move by foreign exchange standards. With most of that strength developed over the past 12 months, the index is up about 22 percent since August 2014. There are several factors behind this. Broadly speaking, the strong...
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.