Regional News In its latest crop monitoring bulletin, the EU Commission’s MARS division noted few to no negative impacts on winter crops from the sudden shift to cold temperatures after a wet autumn. Crops were still vulnerable to frost after the warmer-than-normal fall conditions, but the cold snap has reportedly offered little impact. The major impacts, however, were from the wet sowing conditions for much of western Europe, including France, Germany, and the Benelux countries. French officials have noted that their expected soft wheat sowings will fall 10 percent shy of expectations due to the wet conditions. Heading into the new year, temperatures are expected to remain above-average for most of the continent with below-ave...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Dry bulk markets were volatile but ultimately steady this week with notable differences in rate developments across vessel classes. The Capesize sector, which led the recent rally in freight rates with its dramatic surge, pulled back slightly amid more cautious chartering activity, partic...
Key Market Insights Macro markets delivered a full whipsaw today. Early in the session, crude oil had rallied back above $100/barrel as traders priced renewed concern over the U.S.-Iran standoff and potential supply risk through the Strait of Hormuz. That strength helped pull grains off their o...