Weather may be having an impact on U.S. hard red winter wheat, but another factor will also influence production in 2017. Meanwhile, Argentina's soybean and corn crops are facing their own issues.The markets have come to rely on USDA’s weekly crop progress reports. Among other items, the reports include crop ratings, which have taken on a life of their own over the years. As often noted here, they are highly subjective and generally submitted by county agents. There are no specific guidelines, budgets, training, etc. The weekly consolidated national reports don’t start until the winter wheat crops have broken dormancy in the spring. Several states do, however, submit monthly reports throughout the winter, and some released their ratings as...
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.