Beef packer margins improved for the fourth straight week and once again added about $100/head in profits. Margins are now around $15/head, still low by post-2010 standards but an absolutely massive improvement from recent losses. The increase in margins comes as beef prices have approached new highs with broad strength across grades and primals. Beef markets seasonally turn lower about this time of year, so it will be interesting to see if packers are able to keep product offers high while limiting further appreciation in fed cattle values. Feedlot profit margins were mixed ...
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
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.