The small declines in estimated 2015 U.S. corn and soybean production in this week’s WASDE along with the smaller winter wheat plantings for 2016/17 will not drive the market very far or long. They are fundamentally mere drops in the proverbial bucket. Far more important will be the trends in world supplies, demand and trade of grains and soybeans.Based on price action in grain and soy futures markets in the wake of the USDA reports released on 12 January, it seems fair to say that what impressed markets and traders most from the deluge of data they contained were the smaller estimates for the U.S. corn and soybean production in 2015 and winter wheat acreage for 2016/17. These were all unexpected, giving the reports a bullish tone and domin...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...