The Wall Street Journal noted that China’s pork production fell 55 percent last year (per Rabobank) and yet U.S. pork prices have fallen as China instead bought pork from Europe and Brazil. But global pork supplies are finite, with neither Europe nor Brazil indicating the presence of surplus carryover stocks for the past few years. The data is anomalous. Over the past two years, global pork production fell by 17.7 MMT while trade only grew by 1.9 MMT, and surplus stocks increased by 7.4 percent. China had its own trade tiff going with Canada, which saw surplus pork stocks grow by 23 percent, whereas U.S. carryover increased by 12.5 percent. So, where did the extra pork to feed China come from? China produces half the world’s po...
What You Need to Know Today: Crude oil prices extended their rally today, supported by several developments, including escalating Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure and growing concerns about supply disruptions. The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to remove 50 perc...
Key Takeaways: The agricultural trade surplus has become a sizable deficit: the balance swung from a $40.1 billion surplus in 2011 to a $40.7 billion deficit in 2025. Imports kept growing while exports lost momentum: between 2020 and 2025, agricultural imports increased 45 percent, compa...
USDA released its October Cattle on Feed report Friday, showing 11.4 million cattle in feedlots with capacity for 1,000 head or more, slightly below last year. September placements were the lowest for the month since records began in 1996, marking the third consecutive month of placements sett...
Regional News Dry weather across the UK and Europe is becoming increasingly concerning for the 2027 crops as planting intentions are lowered amid dry soil conditions. Delayed sowing or establishment under adverse conditions could leave crops more vulnerable to frost/freeze events and dise...
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.