USDA's Cattle on Feed report revealed an unexpected number of feeder cattle placements in August. Retail beef demand is also being impacted by changes in pork and poultry supplies as well as an end to the summer grilling season. Crashing Cattle Prices Last week we reported that pre-estimates regarding the monthly USDA Cattle on Feed report showed an average expectation of approximately 0.3 percent growth in August placements of feeder cattle compared with July. In fact, they were down 5 percent. With very slow marketings during August, the pre-report industry forecast indicated total cattle on feed as of 1 September 2015 would be 3.7 percent higher than on the same date last year. Based on the lower placements, however, the increase was 2...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Bangladesh has asked the USA for technical assistance to improve grain storage and strengthen quality testing of imported grains. Of major importance to Bangladesh is the “technology to improve grain preservation and grain s...
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.