GOOD MORNING, Prices opened on a mixed note overnight, higher beans and wheat, lower corn. Weather is wide open for harvest. Soyoil futures opened lower vs. meal, and the EPA did not publish any biofuel mandate guidance as rumored last Friday. Beans continue to have a bid currently, as there is simply more chatter that China has been in the market actively purchasing despite a lack of export sales last week. The big event of the week will be the Sep. Quarterly Stocks report due out on Thursday, and expect more position - squaring into the numbers. Here are the average advertised guesses for Sep. 1 stocks: beans: 0.174 bln bu corn: 1.153 bln bu wheat: 1.855 bln bu Outsid...
What You Need to Know Today: Crude oil prices dropped sharply with traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. There were reports that Iran was behind an attack on a cargo ship near the coast of Oman, which would be a violation of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Pr...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
Can we really expect a bushel of corn to carry an environmental passport throughout the entire food system? One that reliably documents its carbon footprint, biodiversity impacts, water use, soil carbon, and other environmental attributes all the way from the farm field to the consumer? This is...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.