I often long for the good old days when the commodity futures markets opened at 9:30 a.m. and closed at 1:15 p.m. Life was much more comfortable and certain then. Traders and speculators only had to be glued to their screens for those 3 hours and 45 minutes a day, and there was no reason to spend your Sunday evening wondering whether corn, soybeans or wheat were trading. Of course, those were also the days when agricultural commodity markets were concerned only with agricultural events like weather and demand. We didn't worry about how early you could retire, who was going to pay for that retirement, or if you lived in Greece. We didn't worry about a Facebook IPO. We didn't worry about the sudden emergence of a major export competitor lik...
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...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.