Macro Trends U.S. Ag Exports to China Set Record Through September For the first nine months of 2021, the U.S. has shipped a total of 37.17 MMT of agricultural products with an export value of $18.97 billion. That compares to 23.83 MMT worth $12.03 billion for the same period in 2020. The previous record was set during the commodity boom in 2012, when U.S. ag shipments to the Middle Kingdom soared to 22.58 MMT with a value of $15.62 billion. The average FOB value for September increased from August by 16.6 percent to $735.69/MT, the highest monthly average since March 2020, when the country was in full lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Helping drive up the average FOB price have been strong corn sales along with high wheat prices, st...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
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.