The CBOT turned higher on the last day of pre-WASDE trading as continued short covering in wheat and a bullish response to CONAB’s new production data drove the markets. Funds are long corn and soybeans heading into the USDA’s January WASDE report tomorrow and have been actively covering short positions in wheat. USDA typically does not make major changes to the U.S. balance sheet in the January WASDE, but traders are betting that, with lingering global weather concerns, any adjustments will more likely be bullish than bearish. Brazil’s CONAB (the equivalent of USDA) cut the country’s soybean crop by 2.4 MMT in its January forecast, with the crop now estimated at 140.5 MMT. Yields in Prana and Rio Grande do Su...
What You Need to Know Today: The U.S. and Iran agreed to a peace deal on Monday with the deal expected to be signed Friday in Switzerland. The memorandum signed is explicit that Iran will allow 60 days of toll-free transit for all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and President Trump annou...
The U.S. and Iran announced a framework peace deal. Crude oil futures dropped to $83.08, the lowest since early March. The breakthrough comes as President Trump said that if Iran failed to reach a deal, he would order renewed military attacks. An LNG tanker chartered by India’s Petronet c...
Key Takeaways: Vertical farming offers year-round production, reduced water use, and the ability to grow fresh produce closer to consumers. High electricity consumption for lighting and climate control has proven to be the industry's biggest obstacle to profitability. Large upfront investments...
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.