Macroeconomics Food Costs in September Surge Upward by Nearly 9 Percent With the 20th Party Congress concluded, China’s economic data through Q3 are making their way into the public domain. Courtesy of a resurgence in live pig and pork prices last month, food prices, on aggregate, jumped by 8.8 percent from a year ago, the largest spike since August 2020. The average cost of pork rose by 36 percent year-on-year, while fresh fruit and vegetables saw upticks of 17.8 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively. Other notable increases pertained to eggs, up 7.3 percent, milk up 1.1 percent, and cooking oil up 8.3 percent. Meanwhile, the overall inflation rate went from 2.5 percent in August to 2.8 percent in September, as non-food items saw...
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...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
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.