A super El Niño has arrived. Aside from battering California’s coastline, El Niño could affect numerous global commodities with either drought or excess precipitation in 2027. The top crops in its crosshairs are coffee from Brazil/Vietnam, African cocoa, sugar from India, Indonesian palm oil, and Australian wheat.
Read MoreIn Friday’s monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on Oct 1st were 11.16M head, down 0.4% from a year ago. New placements onto feedlots in Sept were 12.1% below last year, and cattle marketings were down 6.6%.
Read MoreBoth the economy and inflation are heating up. The Commerce Dept raised its U.S. GDP growth estimate for Q1 2026 from 2.1% to 2.5% and revised its Q2 2026 projection from 1.5% to 2.2%. Higher than expected AI investment, booming corporate profits, and strong consumer spending drove the changes.
Read MoreBefore the Iran war, the Middle East was the world’s top diesel exporter, with a 19% market share in 2025. North America followed with 15%, and Russia was third at 11%. But diesel shipments from Persian Gulf countries have shrunk to a quarter of their prewar levels.
Read MoreIn its quarterly report, the USDA said that all hog and pig inventories in the U.S. on September 1st (74.30M head) were down 1.5% below a year ago. Hogs kept for breeding (5.88M head) are 1.0% below year-ago levels and the lowest in 12 years.
Read MoreIn its monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on Sept 1st were 11.16M head, up 0.7% from a year ago. However, new placements onto feedlots in Aug were 9.2% below last year, and cattle marketings were down 3.3% at 1.52M head - a 30-year low for the month of Aug.
Read MoreLast week, the Federal Reserve unanimously raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to a range of 3.75-to-4.00%. It was the first rate hike in 3 years. While the move was overdue economically, it was a bit of a surprise politically…
Read MoreIn Friday’s WASDE, the USDA called for smaller corn supplies and reduced ending stocks. Corn ending stocks for 2026/27 are 18.5% below a year ago, and the stocks-to-use ratio has tightened to just 9.7%. Tighter supplies have lit a fire under corn prices.
Read MoreU.S. consumers have been lucky with fuel prices this year. Several Middle East truces, a sharp reduction in Chinese oil imports, and a generous pull from U.S. oil reserves have helped keep energy prices tame for most of the year. But the on-again, off-again war is on again, and the U.S. naval blockade of the Persian Gulf continues.
Read MoreTwo stats released last week should give business planners reason for pause. The first was the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), which was 3.7% for July – far exceeding the 2% inflation target. Secondly, the U.S. federal debt level hit $40 trillion – up a staggering 73.9% from $23T in 2019.
Read MoreIn Friday’s monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on Aug 1st were 11.12M head, up 1.8% from a year ago. However, new placements onto feedlots in July were 11.0% below last year, and cattle marketings were down 7.4%. It’s a continuing saga of less available cattle and fewer cattle sold.
Read MoreLast week’s CPI report finally provided a little relief. July’s Consumer Price Index was up just 0.1% from June and is 3.4% above a year ago. Gasoline prices, while down 2.1% from June, are still 24.6% above a year ago, and fuel oil (home heating oil and the same distillate as diesel) is up 39.1%.
Read MoreFriday’s jobs report was a shocker. The U.S. lost a net 23,000 jobs in July – and employment numbers for May and June were revised lower. The economy has averaged 60,500 net new jobs per month so far this year (Jan-July).
Read MoreThe Federal Reserve chose to leave interest rates unchanged last week, despite calls to raise rates and get a better handle on inflation. With fuel prices elevated, there will be price pressure at every level of the supply chain.
Read MoreIn Friday’s monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on July 1st were 11.37M head, up 2.2% from a year ago. New placements onto feedlots in June were 2.9% below last year, and cattle marketings were down 2.7%.
Read MoreThe coffee market took a sharp bullish turn over the past month. Last year’s harvest had been plagued by weather-related crop losses in Brazil (Arabica) and Vietnam (Robusta), which tightened global inventories.
Read MoreIn Friday’s WASDE report, the USDA lowered its 2026 beef production forecast from 2.2% to 2.7% below a year ago. That comes on top of a 3.6% decline in beef output in 2025. The beef cattle herd is record small and the New World Screwworm threat appears to be growing.
Read MoreLast week’s jobs report was “meh”, with 57,000 net new jobs created in June and the unemployment rate remaining historically low at 4.2%. The U.S. economy has averaged 92,000 net new jobs per month so far this year (Jan-June).
Read MoreIn last week’s quarterly report, the USDA said that all hog and pig inventories in the U.S. on June 1st (73.66M head) were roughly even with a year ago and 0.4% below last quarter (March 1).
Read MoreIn last week’s monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on June 1st were 11.68M head, up 2.1% from a year ago. While new placements onto feedlots in May were 9.7% below last year, a plunge in cattle marketings, down 11.8%, allowed feedlot inventories to rise.
Read More
^TOP