This week provided a very good demonstration of how quickly attitudes and prices can change. The soybean rally continued to gain strength and set new highs, and corn even finally started to break out of the trading range it has occupied since the 2015 harvest was completed.Just last Monday, the vastly different positions that speculative funds had in commodity markets were discussed here. After holding big short positions in corn and wheat futures markets, they reversed to long positions in the soybean market two weeks ago. The lack of any fundamental trigger to force the funds to start to cover those shorts was also a topic in that day’s report. Planting progress was starting to accelerate across the Corn Belt, and it was too early to be c...
What You Need to Know Today: Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans continued to accelerate, with USDA reporting another 558 KMT sold to China and 236 KMT to unknown destinations. Combined with sales announced Wednesday and Thursday, the latest purchases bring the three-day total to approximately...
As fall begins, wild migratory birds are starting their seasonal migration. That has the industry and government officials worried about the potential spread, again, of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Some members of Congress have called for the United States to be prepared for a pote...
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.