For countries that supply renewable agricultural commodities to world buyers, a more perfect world occurs during a year when global demand for a particular one of those is growing while its production in most other competitors declines. In a sense, that is what is happening in the world wheat market of 2018/19. It seems as though Mother Nature targeted production in most major wheat-exporting countries with adverse weather but did so far more leniently by comparison with the U.S. wheat crop. The world set wheat production records in each of the past four years that outstripped demand. After reaching an estimated 658.7 MMT 2012/13, production had climbed more than 100 MMT to 757.9 MMT by 2017/18. However, world wheat use from 2012/13 to 201...
Markets are caught between reasons to keep selling and reasons to take another look. Fund liquidation and renewed peace talks are pressuring grains, while fresh export business and some diesel relief offer encouragement. Corn recovered nearly 10 cents from its low to finish higher, while soybea...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
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.