Regional News Last week initially saw hot temperatures across Southeast Europe before a slight cooling pattern set in. The early-week heat, combined with this week’s forecast for additional hot, dry weather, will likely hinder late-filling crop yields. The hot, dry weather may reduce soybean, sunflower, and to some extent, corn yields and production figures. However, the Black Sea regions of Ukraine and Russia are expected to have dry, somewhat warmer weather that will not be as detrimental to yields. Ukraine’s grain exports are setting a strong pace for the 2019/20 marketing year, up 7.3 MMT YTD. Exports have risen to 11.1 MMT, including 6.75 MMT of wheat, 1.88 MMT of corn, and 2.45 MMT of barley. For the 2019/20 crop y...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Dry bulk markets were volatile but ultimately steady this week with notable differences in rate developments across vessel classes. The Capesize sector, which led the recent rally in freight rates with its dramatic surge, pulled back slightly amid more cautious chartering activity, partic...
Key Market Insights Macro markets delivered a full whipsaw today. Early in the session, crude oil had rallied back above $100/barrel as traders priced renewed concern over the U.S.-Iran standoff and potential supply risk through the Strait of Hormuz. That strength helped pull grains off their o...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.