War Disruption Focusing first on the Bear in the Ukrainian living room, palm and soyoil prices have hit record levels on concern that sunflower seed may lose availability. With Ukraine’s Black Sea port facilities shut down and one grain ship hit by a missile, there could be increased pressure to move commodities westward, to and through the EU. Grains are most impacted but with those hitting their daily futures trading limit, cash flushed into soybeans instead. Soybean values are at a nine-year high. History suggests this is a short-term market disruption, but a full return to business as usual will depend on actions by Western governments. Market Overview Weather is still the key determinant of price. Some analysts dangled t...
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
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.