World Perspectives
softs

USA Gone Nuts

While oilseeds receive much of the attention, tree nuts, which are technically a seed and containing oil, have gone even more gangbusters for U.S. producers in recent years. Almonds have received much of the focus as the U.S. produces nearly 80 percent of the crop and a comparable share of the global trade in the nut. But almonds have run into some controversy over the large amounts of water they require in California’s semi-arid environment. Moreover, global competition has increased with other producers expanding their output of almonds.The U.S. is far less dominant in walnuts, which have historically been an important tree nut in Asia where it is considered “brain food” since its shell is shaped like the human brain. The U.S. produces le...

Related Articles
livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins fell over $100/head for the second straight week to hit - $151/head, which is among the worst margins in the past decade. The culprit for weaker margins was an $11/cwt pullback in the Choice cutout and other beef values while fed cattle prices were steady/slightly higher. Pa...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Grains and Livestock Take Diverging Paths

Grain and oilseed markets pulled back to start the week after favorable showers fell across the U.S. over the weekend. The moisture revived crop prospects and offered a meaningful buffer ahead of some heat that will build over parts of the Midwest this week. The weather outlook was enough to st...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

WPI Crop Progress and Conditions App (Updated 21 July)

Update for 28 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where o...

livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins fell over $100/head for the second straight week to hit - $151/head, which is among the worst margins in the past decade. The culprit for weaker margins was an $11/cwt pullback in the Choice cutout and other beef values while fed cattle prices were steady/slightly higher. Pa...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Grains and Livestock Take Diverging Paths

Grain and oilseed markets pulled back to start the week after favorable showers fell across the U.S. over the weekend. The moisture revived crop prospects and offered a meaningful buffer ahead of some heat that will build over parts of the Midwest this week. The weather outlook was enough to st...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

WPI Crop Progress and Conditions App (Updated 21 July)

Update for 28 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where o...

Ten Days and Counting

Outside markets are counting on trade deals or another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) come 1 August. Since the 7 July announcement of the small window to negotiate trade deals with Washington, The Dow is down 0.17 percent, but the S&P 500 is up 1.22 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq has...

Image
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.

Search World Perspectives

Sign In to World Perspectives

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up