Commodity markets retraced some of the losses from Thursday, ending higher on Friday but not necessarily for the week. Corn is on a roll, nearing heights not seen in more than a year, but even cattle lost some of their bullish glow this week. 01172025MC_weeklychange.png 22.13 KBA key vector has been weather in South America, and that has not changed. Doubts about whether Argentina will receive salvation-level rains are increasing. Now added as a wildcard is the inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. president on Monday. While he and Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly spoke today, no one is expecting a smooth ride ahead. Theoretically, he could get China to recommit to the agriculture purchases agreed to in 2020, but there will like...
Weather concerns and the impacts of the war in Iran helped push wheat and corn to sharp gains Tuesday, with both markets blowing past key technical resistance levels. The weather is now coupled with geopolitical tensions that look increasingly hard to resolve, which is giving funds the perfect...
Congress is moving forward with its FY 2027 spending bills, while also still working to address FY 2026 funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is still in a shutdown. The House Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Subcommittee marked up and passed its FY 2027 bill. The House bill prov...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Tunisian researchers have been able to fully sequence the genomes of two local durum wheat types that have been grown in Tunisia for generations. They say that this “could be the key to developing more climate-resistant duru...
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.