The new USDA report from the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) for Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, the newly dubbed South Central Daily Direct Slaughter Cattle Report Summary, showed that negotiated cash trade in the region as of Tuesday was mostly inactive, with only light demand and just one reportable steer transaction. The transaction was for steers grading 65-80 percent Choice, with 128 head averaging 1,535 pounds, at a price of $230 per hundredweight. There are actually two new South-Central reports: the Afternoon Report, which covers transactions during the afternoon reporting period, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and the Summary Report, which provides a broader look at negotiated purchases over a 24-hour reporti...
Markets are getting into the Halloween spirit, handing out more tricks than treats. There has been some encouraging news, but it hasn’t been enough to slow the broader slide. Now buyers need to show up with something other than another “Charlie Brown” rock for the bag. Somethi...
Key Takeaways: The United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Ukraine dominate global corn exports, with geography, trade relationships, and seasonal production patterns shaping their competitive advantages. U.S. corn exports reached a record 87.1 MMT in 2025/26, with Mexico, Japan, South Korea, an...
Key Takeaways: Milk alone has not covered the full economic cost in any year since 2021: milk revenue fell short by $4.50, $2.15, $6.50, $1.27 and $2.34 per hundredweight in 2021 through 2025. Calf and cattle prices decided whether dairies cleared cost: cattle and other income lifted total rev...
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.