More to Come Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would not invade Ukraine and there was a whole dialogue around the meaning of invasion versus incursion, and the limits of responses to nuanced aggressions. Commodity markets reacted today based on future price impacts, and the rally looks like an expectation that Moscow will not settle for mere control of the Donbas. This was made clear by the speech yesterday by Vladimir Putin, which was filled with grievances that can only be resolved by bringing Ukraine back into the Russian fold. Once he has control of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, grain can still flow but aggrieved Ukrainians may not feel the same ambition for producing buffer crops. The Biden Administration continues to attack...
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
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.