World Perspectives

Zero but Not Negative Interest Rates

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FMOC) was scheduled to meet on Wednesday of this week, but for the second time it took emergency action prior to the meeting. On Sunday, Chairman Jerome Powell announced a 100 basis point cut to the federal fund rate. This comes after the Fed announced an emergency 50 basis point rate cut on 3 March.  That puts the rate in the range of 0 to 0.25 percent, to where it was lowered in 2008 and stayed until the end of 2015. In his statement Powell generally ruled out negative interest rates like Japan and Europe have had. Back in the fall of 2019, President Trump tweeted several times that the Fed should adopt negative interest rates, or at least get down to zero rates so that the...

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Market Commentary: Energies, Acreage Worries Support Soybeans; Wheat Drifts Lower

CBOT ag futures were highly mixed on Tuesday as traders recovered from Monday’s drubbing and limit-down move in soybeans and soyoil. At Monday’s close, the options market was suggesting soybeans and soyoil were trading significantly lower than the limit-down close permitted, but tho...

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Greeley JBS Beef Plant on Strike

The JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, went on strike yesterday. Today is day two of the labor shutdown. The Greeley plant can process about 6,000 head per day, or 5 percent of the U.S. beef supply. This is a major disruption. Notably, it comes on the heels of Tyson closing its plant in Lexin...

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May 26 Corn closed at $4.54/bushel, up $0 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Wheat closed at $5.8975/bushel, down $0.075 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Soybeans closed at $11.57/bushel, up $0.0175 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Soymeal closed at $311.7/short ton, down $0.5 from ye...

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livestock

Greeley JBS Beef Plant on Strike

The JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, went on strike yesterday. Today is day two of the labor shutdown. The Greeley plant can process about 6,000 head per day, or 5 percent of the U.S. beef supply. This is a major disruption. Notably, it comes on the heels of Tyson closing its plant in Lexin...

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Livestock Industry Margins

Beef packer margins turned positive for the first time since late last year as returns improved to $53/head last week. The turnaround was driven by a strong increase in the boxed beef cutout, which rose to $388.16/cwt, while fed cattle prices declined further on the week. The threat of the labo...

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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.

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