Macroeconomics Price Surges, Missing Data, and the Market Outlook While monthly food prices have only recently seen an increase from where they were a year ago, the data should come with a huge caveat. The driver of the surge from the second half of 2019 through the second half of 2020 were live hog and pork prices. With their collapse here in the first half of 2021, the aggregate average fell into negative territory before a modest uptick in May. The fact that pork prices account for about 40 to 50 percent of the calculated basket has hidden the runup in other prices. Moreover, with hog producers having such high operating margins for that same period, the rapidly rising feed prices were often absorbed. The impact of winter diseases, fr...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
Russian Grain Markets: 29 June-3 July 2026 The new marketing season has officially begun in Russia, although bearish sentiment has been concentrated in the southern regions closest to the Black Sea ports, where export demand has been weakest. Delays in grain deliveries to inland elevators have...
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.