It was mostly a day in the red as coronavirus anxiety continues to haunt investors. Fear of betting against calamity is understandable since a story of outright disaster is easy to imagine. Rabobank predicts another four months of supply chain disruptions except that both nearby and more distant futures contracts are bearing losses. In the SRW contract, at one point today, nine SRW contracts were in the red but July 2021 showed a modest gain on small volume. By the end of the day, it was only the distant contracts losing value. UNCTAD says that China’s exports of manufactured goods will be down $50 billion this year. The effects of COVID-19 will reverberate through the global economy for many months to come. One notable observation i...
What You Need to Know Today: Traders are increasingly focused on next Wednesday’s August WASDE report, with corn and soybean yield estimates expected to drive the next major move in grain markets. Recent crop condition declines and late-July heat have increased uncertainty around USDA&rs...
Yesterday the Senate Agriculture Committee held its markup of the “skinny” farm bill, and it was derailed over Democratic opposition to plans for imposing food stamp costs on state governments. The Democrats pushed back on a provision that required states to pick up a larger share o...
Key Takeaways: WPI’s 2025/26 corn export models continue to reflect strong international demand and put the total marketing year volume slightly above USDA’s estimates. Strong old crop corn exports are offset by weaker feed and residual use, leaving ending stocks slightly ele...
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.