U.S. winter wheat acres will be the smallest in 107 years, and conditions in two key states suggest no reason to expect improvement in production numbers at this time. The potential impact of a steep reduction in winter wheat planted acres was discussed here in February (see Ag Perspectives, 17 February 2017). U.S. winter wheat acres will be the smallest in 107 years. The 12 January USDA winter wheat plantings estimate came in 3.754 million acres below 2016. Meanwhile, the 2017 spring wheat and durum acreage estimates will be released on 31 March. Our opinion is that durum acres could decline by as much as 500,000 acres and “other spring” could drop by as much as 1 million acres. The combined 2017 spring and winter wheat planted acres in th...
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.