Soybeans and soyoil held their gains from higher overnight closes, but the guidance of being higher to neutral overnight in corn, wheat and meal was rejected by day traders. Neither solid corn export sales, weather concerns in European and Chinese wheat, nor the prospect of trade agreement relief could turn around grains. There was a new contract low in wheat, and of course new contract highs in cattle. Speaking of trade agreements, around the same time the EU was announcing a list of American products facing retaliatory tariffs, the White House was bragging about a trade deal with the United Kingdom. Markets chose the hope of the latter over the risks of the former. Notably, the ink isn’t quite dry yet on a bilateral U.S.-UK tr...
What You Need to Know Today: The cattle market rebounded sharply this week, with January feeder cattle futures gaining $16.98/cwt and February live cattle futures advancing $7.60/cwt since last Friday. Tyson Foods' plans to restore a second processing shift at its Amarillo, Texas, facili...
Tuesday’s CPI report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed inflation roaring back stronger than expected in October. That probably locks in another rate hike – which was expected anyway – at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in December. Consumer pric...
Key Takeaways: The rationale for farm programs has changed significantly from their original intentions. Farmers’ incomes have grown sharply and have surpassed non-farm incomes beginning in the 1970s. Current farm programs are complex and focus on supporting risk management, environmenta...
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.