Retail beef prices have tested the consumer limit with 13 percent growth over the past year, while pork prices have been tempered by increased slaughter weights and uncertainty about the longer-term impact of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv). Meat and Livestock Overview Feeder margins dropped last week but remain solidly in the black at $223.51 per head, according to the Sterling Profit Tracker, and compares with a negative margin of $74.62 at this time last year. This has allowed feeders to aggressively pursue what cattle are offered. The $200/cwt line has floated up to heavier cattle after starting at 5-weight and then moving up to 6-weight before reaching 7-weight. According to USDA reports, 7-weight cattle in several Midwestern...
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...
What You Need to Know Today: The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at 3.75 to 4.0 percent Wednesday, with two officials dissenting in favor of a 25-basis-point increase. The Fed upgraded its assessment of economic growth from "solid" to "strong" but adopted a more patient approa...
Russian Grain Markets: 19–23 October 2026 The Russian grain market continued its recovery during the week, although prices remained volatile across regions. Wheat was notably bullish, while feed barley and corn were slower to appreciate, primarily because of weaker export demand amid logi...
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.