With China importing over 44 percent of the world’s traded pork and at least 13 percent of its traded corn, knowing the size of the hog herd is critical to knowing supply and demand. The USDA/FAS attaché in China has posted a number closer to the official Chinese number, but USDA in Washington has a much smaller calculation. Rabobank’s latest number splits the difference. Rabobank says the herd is 10 to 15 percent larger than a year ago after experiencing 3 – 5 percent monthly declines since December due to a relatively smaller resurgence in Africa Swine Fever (ASF). The accuracy of estimates is not made any easier by Chinese policy pronouncements seemingly contradicted by domestic prices. Soymeal prices have softe...
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.