World Perspectives
softs

White Commodities Focus

White commodities is an American euphemism for three crops, cotton, rise, and sugar, that are all white in color and each have statutory programs considered complex or unique. They are generally produced in the U.S. south, and their traits include: Cotton: A chemically intensive crop with the largest subsidy on an area basis, and with a mostly non-food use except for cottonseed oil. The more valuable Pima variety is grown in Arizona and California. Rice: A water intensive crop with methane emissions and strong competition from Asian varieties.  Sugar: A dubious nutrition profile that is subsidized by consumers via strict import limitations. India is the largest rice exporter, and its crop is down due to a late monsoon, and its suga...

Related Articles
soy-oilseeds

WASDE Soybeans

Soybeans - USDA’s April 2025 estimates increase U.S. soybeans oil exports by 500 million pounds due to strong export commitments. U.S. soybean exports are unchanged and imports increased slightly – resulting in a 5 million bushel decrease in ending stocks to 375 million. The U.S. se...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

CFTC COT Report Analysis

The ag markets and traders’ position in them look dramatically different now than they did last Tuesday, the CFTC’s weekly reporting deadline. On Wednesday after the market close, President Trump announced a suite of sweeping tariffs against literally every country in the world, whi...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

CFTC COT Report Analysis

Friday’s CFTC report showed continued selling activity from managed money funds in the grain and oilseed sector. The action was expected, given the weakness in futures over the past few weeks and funds’ positions as of last Tuesday were in line with expectations. In the soy complex,...

soy-oilseeds

WASDE Soybeans

Soybeans - USDA’s April 2025 estimates increase U.S. soybeans oil exports by 500 million pounds due to strong export commitments. U.S. soybean exports are unchanged and imports increased slightly – resulting in a 5 million bushel decrease in ending stocks to 375 million. The U.S. se...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

CFTC COT Report Analysis

The ag markets and traders’ position in them look dramatically different now than they did last Tuesday, the CFTC’s weekly reporting deadline. On Wednesday after the market close, President Trump announced a suite of sweeping tariffs against literally every country in the world, whi...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

CFTC COT Report Analysis

Friday’s CFTC report showed continued selling activity from managed money funds in the grain and oilseed sector. The action was expected, given the weakness in futures over the past few weeks and funds’ positions as of last Tuesday were in line with expectations. In the soy complex,...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

CFTC COT Report Analysis

Last week’s CFTC report showed some interesting an unexpected trends. First, despite the technical bounce in corn futures, funds cut 36 percent of their long (74,000 contracts) and are now long just 132,000 contracts, or less than half of their position just a few weeks ago. That rapid li...

Image
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.

Search World Perspectives

Sign In to World Perspectives

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up