It was another day of big volume in the soy complex. While soybeans closed higher for a fourth session, corn and wheat failed to follow, or perhaps their drag pulled soybeans back to fundamental reality. There are still no new export sales. The Chinese are smart, and if they intend to buy, they will patiently wait for all the hoopla in the market to dissipate. If China does buy 8 MMT of U.S. soybeans, it might cost them $240 million more than buying them from Brazil. But that is small beer (0.03 percent) in the total bilateral trading relationship, and a price Xi Jinping might willingly absorb to avoid larger problems. For the week, all the major agricultural contracts except wheat closed higher. There was a new contract high in lean...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
Key Takeaways: The Middle East and North Africa's arid climate and limited water resources have created a structural dependence on imported wheat. Government wheat tenders in major importing countries serve as important benchmarks for global trade, providing insight into exporter competitivene...
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.