Regional News The weather forecast for Europe and the Black Sea remain highly varied, though mostly optimistic for grain and oilseed production. Conditions have been favorable for planting across the UK and EU to date, though Ukraine and Russia have seen unseasonably cold conditions that have slowed fieldwork. Now, the trend for the UK and northern Europe is for cooler and drier weather, which could start to cause issues for crop development. Similarly, Ukraine and Russia remain dry and oil moisture levels are below recent years in many places, which is increasing concerns for the region’s wheat crop. Ukraine’s grain exports fell 60 percent year-over-year in April and totaled 2.27 MMT, due primarily to a 61 pe...
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.
There was heavy volume exiting soybeans, which dragged down the broader market today. The lack of a specific Chinese buying commitment for soybeans undermined speculators who had placed bets on state-directed trade. But even the Chinese do not totally ignore market fundamentals. They may still...
WPI has officially launched Transportation Perspectives as a standalone weekly report separate from our Ag Perspectives articles and analysis. Current Ag Perspectives subscribers will have gratis access to the report through 16 April 2026. Please email us or subscribe online after this date to...