Some are likely calling Ernest Barnes, a wheat farmer in Kansas, an opportunistic ambulance chaser. He is suing Monsanto because last week's discovery of biotech wheat in an Oregon field places his livelihood "at serious risk." He can only say "at risk" because 1) he likely grows a very different kind of plant than the soft white wheat implicated in Oregon, and 2) wheat futures have bounced along seemingly unaffected by the incident. The occurrence is so unusual that sabotage is suspected, which makes Mr. Barnes' suit the equivalent of marathon races in other cities suing Boston for not having prevented the Tsarnaev brothers' bombing attack...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Key Market Insights Geopolitical Limbo: Geopolitical risk remained a key driver across global commodity markets today. President Trump stated that the Iran memorandum of understanding is not yet final and warned that military action could resume if negotiations fail. Both sides continue w...