Winter has yet to leave the U.S. Northern Plains. In fact, it hasn't even made a sincere attempt to create a false hope that spring is near. There is significant snow cover across most of the Dakotas and western Minnesota, with another potentially significant snowfall in the forecast for South Dakota and southern Minnesota. The extended forecasts offer no relief from the much-below-normal temperature readings for the next two weeks and maybe even beyond that. It is not late yet, but if current forecasts hold true, it will soon start to push the planting calendars back into early to mid-May. That could have some significant impacts on what farmers in this region plant. The table below shows what North Dakota's farmers have planted over the...
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.