World Perspectives

Tight Margins Prevent Disruption; Hungary Isn’t Hungry; Two-Tiered Pricing

Tight Margins Prevent Disruption While populist politicians complain about corporate greed, the businesses with long term success in agriculture achieve their success via tight margins. Bloomberg notes that upstarts in the “agrifoodtech” space like Farmers Edge Inc. and Gro Intelligence failed to disrupt the sector like eBay, Uber and Amazon. That is because they contrasted the price of a bushel of wheat and the cost of a loaf of bread and mistakenly assumed some arbitrage opportunity. The upstarts reveal not just their ignorance of how the sector works but that of the investors that handed them billions of dollars to waste. Hungary Isn’t Hungry Hungary assumes the six-month rotating presidency of the EU in July and in...

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feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Mixed Signals

There were lots of mixed pressures on the market today, and this week overall. Outside markets were key among them. Trading volume was modest today, except for meal, oil, and livestock. On the week, livestock and soyoil took losses, while fund long positions held up for soymeal.  While so...

Jobs Report and How the Fed Will See It

Today’s jobs report was highly anticipated as a key benchmark before the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting later this month and expected to be a factor in the Fed’s decision of whether to cut the federal funds rate by 25 basis points or 50 basis points. As it happens, tod...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Export Sales

Export Sales and Shipments for August 23-29, 2024. Wheat:  Net sales of 340,000 metric tons (MT) for 2024/2025 were down 36 percent from the previous week and 17 percent from the prior 4-week average. Export shipments of 638,100 MT--a marketing-year high--were up 11 percent from the previo...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Market Commentary: Mixed Signals

There were lots of mixed pressures on the market today, and this week overall. Outside markets were key among them. Trading volume was modest today, except for meal, oil, and livestock. On the week, livestock and soyoil took losses, while fund long positions held up for soymeal.  While so...

Jobs Report and How the Fed Will See It

Today’s jobs report was highly anticipated as a key benchmark before the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting later this month and expected to be a factor in the Fed’s decision of whether to cut the federal funds rate by 25 basis points or 50 basis points. As it happens, tod...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Export Sales

Export Sales and Shipments for August 23-29, 2024. Wheat:  Net sales of 340,000 metric tons (MT) for 2024/2025 were down 36 percent from the previous week and 17 percent from the prior 4-week average. Export shipments of 638,100 MT--a marketing-year high--were up 11 percent from the previo...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Summary of Futures

Dec 24 Corn closed at $4.0625/bushel, down $0.045 from yesterday's close.  Dec 24 Wheat closed at $5.67/bushel, down $0.0775 from yesterday's close.  Nov 24 Soybeans closed at $10.05/bushel, down $0.185 from yesterday's close.  Dec 24 Soymeal closed at $324.4/short ton, down $2.1...

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From WPI Consulting

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.

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