To badly paraphrase Shakespeare, these are the days that try men's nerves and wallets. We refer to the nerves and wallets of everyone throughout the agricultural crop marketing chain, from producer to end-users. Food retailers' and consumers' nerves and wallets are not being tried yet, but chances are they will be by early 2013.By now everyone is aware of the intense Midwestern drought that persists with no end in sight. Publicity in the national press has spread the news. What no one truly knows yet is the ultimate extent of the damage done to crop production. This cannot be known until the weather pattern finally changes (it always does) and better assessments can be made. Of course, harvest results will provide the ultimate measure of...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
Key Takeaways: WPI’s new EU rapeseed crushing margin models point to weaker processing returns over the next four months due to higher rapeseed procurement costs and weaker product values. Statistical forecasts call for German crushing margins to decline from €181/MT to €...
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.