Trade in ag futures was a tale of two cities, with grains sinking into the red while the livestock markets rallied to fresh highs. Grains and oilseeds saw pressure from lackluster technical conditions and, for corn and wheat, expectations of ample domestic and global supplies. Soybeans saw weakness from continued export demand concerns, though bears were cautious with Chinese trade officials in Washington this week. Conversely, cattle and hog futures rallied with strong technical underpinnings and bullish fundamentals. The day’s rally created fresh record highs for cattle futures while hogs came within spitting distance of their contract highs. WPI looks for these big picture trends (bullish livestock, bearish grains) to continue in t...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.