Today’s USDA quarterly Grain Stocks report provided the market with a bullish input but there may be another shoe to drop. Russia’s stocks to use ratio for corn and wheat have been dropping for four straight years. Over that timeframe, it is down 64 percent for corn and 48 percent for wheat. Russia has continued to export wheat at low prices despite the tightening supply, but it has increased the export duty on corn by ten-fold, to 2,786.2 rubles ($30)/MT. Russia has exported aggressively to both earn foreign exchange and build respect from food insecure nations. However, Moscow has concluded that at least when it comes to corn, it needs to cover its own food security needs and prevent domestic food inflation. But wheat a...
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.
Developer's Note 24 August 2026: WPI recently completed an exercise that updated the codebase for this app and solved some of the discrepancies between our five-year average calculation and USDA's. There are a few lingering cases where early (late) starts (finishes) to the crop cycle resu...
What You Need to Know Today: Corn and soybean futures were lower to open the week, with funds still in control and in a selling mood. The upcoming WASDE report on Tuesday is also likely to feature larger corn and soybean stocks, which helped put grain futures on the defensive. Wheat futures we...
Soybeans Brazil Last week was once again very quiet, with very few trades. There is little activity in Brazil's old-crop market, with virtually no old-crop offers remaining for November. Brazil's export lineup for November and December is currently much smaller than last year's. After exporting...