Usually, it’s the month of March that comes in like a lion and leaves like a lamb, but commodity markets chose to follow that pattern in May, which creates an interesting summer outlook. With Friday’s trade concluding the month of May, it’s notable that the major ag markets all settled lower and abandoned their early-month trends of roaring higher on broad-based weather concerns. Friday’s trade saw corn, soybeans, and wheat all settle lower with corn and soybeans breaking below key technical support points, despite lingering acreage questions. Today is the prevent plant date for corn in several states and many are wondering if these acres will be seeded amid a wet seven-day forecast. Even if they get planted, the cro...
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.