Whether one considers them to be investors or speculators, managed funds have collectively taken a real beating in the grain and soy markets during the last two months. They have been carrying large positions on the wrong side of the recent whiplash market action.Early in our grain business career, we gained considerable respect for futures market speculators. During the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. government sought to support high domestic crop prices with little regard for fundamentals of supply and demand. Unsurprisingly, this encouraged excess production of wheat, corn and other feed grains. The result was that USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) acquired huge stocks of grain. Creative programs for disposing of government stocks usu...
What You Need to Know Today: Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans continued to accelerate, with USDA reporting another 558 KMT sold to China and 236 KMT to unknown destinations. Combined with sales announced Wednesday and Thursday, the latest purchases bring the three-day total to approximately...
Key Takeaways: With the fall calf run now upon us, producers are finally getting a glimpse of what their realized profits will be for 2026. Some producers may have already obtained a strong estimate of 2026 revenues, especially if calves were forward sold in, for example, the mid-summer...
As fall begins, wild migratory birds are starting their seasonal migration. That has the industry and government officials worried about the potential spread, again, of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Some members of Congress have called for the United States to be prepared for a pote...
From WPI Consulting
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.