Last week’s USDA Quarterly Stocks report revealed that farmers are holding 36 percent more corn in on-farm storage than a year earlier. One rule of thumb is for farmers to calculate their break-even point and then market their crop over the marketing year. The old calculus, before South America became a counter-cyclical supplier, was for prices to be lowest at the start of the marketing year and then rise as supplies are depleted. That model is clearly discredited as corn prices now decline in the last few weeks of the marketing year. Farmers could try to continue holding on to their stocks, awaiting and hoping the market will eventually add a weather premium. Many larger farms are well capitalized for such a strategy. Bu...
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...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.