Today was all about improved weather forecasts for the Midwest. Weekend showers across the upper Midwest offered a modest reprieve from the extreme heat, although reports of leaf roll in the corn crop are still notable. Fortunately, the six-10-day weather forecast features dryness but with mild temperatures that will be less threatening. Heat will be the key variable for the next two weeks as the bulk of the U.S. corn crop enters the pollination stage. This afternoon’s Crop Progress report from USDA showed only modest deterioration in the U.S. corn condition, while soybean and spring wheat conditions held steady with the prior week. All three crops are behind their typical ratings for this time of year, but the fact that they didn&rs...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
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.