How to read this

The leaderboard

Start here. The leaderboard ranks every feedstuff by what it actually costs to buy a pound of protein or a pound of energy from it, on a dry-matter basis, against corn and soybean meal. A feed under 100 percent of soybean meal on protein is delivering protein cheaper than soybean meal this week. Same idea for corn on energy. This is the calculation a nutritionist does by hand; the page does it for the whole board at once.

The ingredient pages

Each ingredient has a page: its board price over time, the week-over-week and year-over-year moves, and its cost per unit of protein and energy against the benchmark. Every price is labeled with its basis, FOB plant or delivered, because the cheapest board price is not the cheapest fed price once freight is in. Below the numbers, each page sets the feed against its benchmark, DDGS versus corn and the like, per ton, per ton of dry matter and per pound of protein and energy, because two feeds at the same dollars per ton can carry very different amounts of nutrient.

Prices by region

The region page lists every feedstuff priced in each trade region, cheapest first, with each price's basis. Feed is a freight business, so a feedstuff that is cheap in Iowa can be dear on the coast. Read the region tables for what is available near a plant, and the leaderboard for whether it is a good buy.

The range

Where USDA reports a low-high range, we store the whole range and quote it as a range. A single value is kept only so the charts and the week-over-week math have one number to track. It is the reported average, never an invented midpoint dressed up as a quote.

What we do not say

We do not tell anyone what to feed or when to buy. We report public USDA prices and the cost-per-nutrient math on them. Inclusion limits, effective fiber, palatability and animal response are the nutritionist's call, not a price table's. This is not purchasing, contracting or formulation advice.

New to the vocabulary? The glossary defines every term the brief uses.