Farmers in Bulgaria and Romania will start planting corn in a few weeks. They will probably reduce that acreage after suffering from low yields during the past three years because of the summer drought, favoring instead a different crop that showed better returns. Milling Wheat The Black Sea market remained firm during the past two weeks due to slow farmer selling and strength of the Russian ruble. Domestic prices have started to weaken as they are $2-5 lower versus early February. However, the FOB market for Russian 12.5 percent protein wheat gained another $2 last week as logistics remain complicated under the winter conditions. Weather in Russia and Ukraine is not currently causing any significant concern. Temperatures in the region ar...
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.