On Thursday, USDA will release its Quarterly Hogs and Pigs report. Key data will be inventories of slaughter hogs, breeding sows, an estimate of the March–May pig crop with its accompanying litter rate, and producers’ farrowing intentions for June through August – the second estimate and the first estimate for September through November. The June through August farrowing intentions released in the March report were 2.987 million head, which would be 98 percent of 2023. The March through May farrowings are expected to be 99.1 percent of last year; that is in line with the 1 March report which showed farrowing intentions at 99 percent of the year prior. Overall, the expectation is for an increased swine herd as of 1 J...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.