The market reacted bearishly to reports of HPAI in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas, implying concerns about a demand shock. USDA advised there is no risk to human health and the animals are recovering. Nonetheless, feeder cattle futures dropped $3-5 and live cattle prices dropped over $2/cwt. Class III milk futures were mixed, even though the impact is on dairy cows. Spent cows eventually go to the beef market but comprise less than 3 percent of the cattle slaughter. The trade’s excitement is in cattle because their numbers are at 50-year lows, while returns to dairy cows have been stagnant. Yet it is the pull from the beef side that is leading to an eventual spike in dairy prices. Dairy farmers see high prices for beef calves and low...
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.