USDA’s forecast for U.S. corn use in 2020/21 may be as over-optimistic as its prediction for 2019/20 corn exports, but at this juncture prices have not worked as low as WPI is thinking they should go. In relative terms, the 2020/21 stocks to use ratio is well below levels experienced in the mid-1980’s and no one wants to relive those days. They required the introduction of supply controls and involved a lot of bankruptcies. More instructive from the historical perspective is that large ending stocks eventually decline but sharp drops are not the norm. The 70 percent drop between 1982/83 and 1983/84 was due to one of the most severe droughts of the century and not because of a miraculous burst in demand. This may not even...
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.