The recent record cold weather, especially in the South, will have some lasting impacts on agriculture throughout the new year. On a positive note, a likely benefit includes pest control in places where unseasonably warm weather last year let bugs thrive. On the negative side, many crops, ranging from fruits and vegetables to seedling softwoods that are typically planted in the coming weeks, will be stunted or killed. Meanwhile, poultry producers faced dramatically higher heating costs, particularly those who hatch chicks as they must be kept very warm. One of the biggest and lasting impacts, however, could be on nitrogen fertilizer. Global fertilizer prices were already making a bull run in the fall with China shutting down some productio...
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.
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...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...