Usually, the day USDA releases its monthly world supply and demand report – known colloquially as “WASDE day” – sees heightened volatility in CBOT ag futures. That was true again Tuesday, though there was little causal connection between the WASDE and the market’s volatility. Rather, the WASDE’s numbers were benign for the major ag markets, with USDA making only minor, well-anticipated adjustments to the U.S. and global balance sheets. The volatility, rather, stemmed from the gyrations in oil futures as the world grapples with the impacts of the U.S./Israel conflict with Iran. Oil futures saw greater volatility Tuesday as they abandoned Monday’s incredible surge and traded lower on news that the G7...
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.