The day’s trading started out hum and glum. Corn and soybean contracts moved modestly like their overnight closes and stayed marginal for most of the day. Soyoil was continuing its recent mostly negative run. Wheat never went anywhere important, high or low. Then there was a breakout late...
On this penultimate day of trading in 2024, there were ups, downs and perhaps some profit-taking. Like the overnight, grains and soybeans opened higher this morning. However, by late morning most contracts dipped lower and then the soy complex, SRW and HRW managed to snag a higher close at the...
This week marks the end of 2024, and the beginning of 2025. Indeed, 2024 was a notable year in the cattle markets with implications to carry over into next year. The U.S. cattle inventory entered 2024 at the lowest level since 1951, with the supply of feeder cattle outside feedlots...
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.