World Perspectives
biofuel

Energy and Agriculture

Global agriculture produces energy, with 23 percent of ethanol produced from sugarcane, and another 7 percent produced from the molasses byproduct of processing sugarcane or sugarbeets. Increased production of ethanol has caused global sugar carryover to decline. Agriculture is also a major consumer of energy, utilizing 30 percent of BTU’s particularly through diesel and fertilizer.   Without energy, manufacturing is dead. Germany has shown how to make its manufacturing sector suffer via dumb energy policy, such as phasing out all of its nuclear power plants and becoming fully at the mercy of the pariah state Russia for its energy needs.  ...

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feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Weather Pressures Grains; Crush Pace Boosts Soybeans

The CBOT managed to recover from a dramatic overnight plunge with soybeans leading the fight to put values back in the green. Most of the news coming out of the weekend was bearish – between larger Russian wheat crop projections, the advancing South American harvests, and generally favora...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Summary of Futures

Mar 26 Corn closed at $4.2625/bushel, down $0.055 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Wheat closed at $5.3775/bushel, down $0.11 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soybeans closed at $11.34/bushel, up $0.01 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soymeal closed at $305.8/short ton, down $3.4 fr...

House Farm Bill Text Released

Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Glenn Thompson (R-Pennsylvania), released the text of the farm bill on Friday. Markup is scheduled for next week. Some key highlights are shown below.  Commodities: Directs reporting on dairy production expenses to ensure that producer costs ar...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Weather Pressures Grains; Crush Pace Boosts Soybeans

The CBOT managed to recover from a dramatic overnight plunge with soybeans leading the fight to put values back in the green. Most of the news coming out of the weekend was bearish – between larger Russian wheat crop projections, the advancing South American harvests, and generally favora...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Summary of Futures

Mar 26 Corn closed at $4.2625/bushel, down $0.055 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Wheat closed at $5.3775/bushel, down $0.11 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soybeans closed at $11.34/bushel, up $0.01 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soymeal closed at $305.8/short ton, down $3.4 fr...

House Farm Bill Text Released

Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Glenn Thompson (R-Pennsylvania), released the text of the farm bill on Friday. Markup is scheduled for next week. Some key highlights are shown below.  Commodities: Directs reporting on dairy production expenses to ensure that producer costs ar...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

CFTC COT Report Analysis

The attached PDF offers graphical depiction and seasonal analysis of managed money and commercial traders' net position in key agricultural commodity markets. The data is, of course, taken from the CFTC's weekly Commitment of Traders report, using the futures only data. WPI recently completed a...

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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.

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