In a strange way, the approach of Halloween turns our attention to the current state of grain and soy markets here in the U.S. Twisting the spirit of "Trick OR Treat" somewhat, it seems to us that markets are both providing treats AND playing tricks at the same time.Tomorrow (31 October) is Halloween, the eve before All Saints Day on the Christian calendar. Celebrating the night before the day of Saints may have its roots in early Christian history, but it has turned into something far different. Halloween has become a celebration of all things scary. It is also an opportunity for children to dress up in weird costumes, ring doorbells and threaten to play tricks on whoever answers unless they are rewarded with treats. "Trick or Treat" has b...
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...
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.