The CBOT was mixed for the day with wheat futures sinking lower after the HRW and SRW growing regions received favorable rains Wednesday and early Thursday. That, combined with export pressure from Russia and the Black Sea countries, put wheat on the defensive with funds emerging as net sellers again. The pressure in wheat spilled over into corn and pushed the spot December contract lower, though bear spreading lifted deferred markets. Strong export sales and a rally in soyoil sent the soybean market higher, though the charts still look bearish. The markets are now largely focused on export trends and prices, weather for the Northern Hemisphere winter wheat crops, and rains in Argentina and Brazil. Seasonally, futures are approaching t...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
Can we really expect a bushel of corn to carry an environmental passport throughout the entire food system? One that reliably documents its carbon footprint, biodiversity impacts, water use, soil carbon, and other environmental attributes all the way from the farm field to the consumer? This is...
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.