Russian Grain Markets: 2–9 February 2024 The market remained bearish following the global bearish trend, huge stocks, and growing export duties. It’s not clear why the government would continue raising export duties in a bearish export market. The case with the feed barley duty makes it clear a decrease in the export duty helps. In the Black Sea region, Russia’s only rival for feed barley is Ukraine which is now struggling with exporting excessive corn stocks and is unlikely to harm Russia’s barley dominance in the region. At least not this season. Russia has been quite strong in the global grain markets during 2023/24 and this season may become Russia’s record-breaking year as the export forecast is al...
What You Need to Know Today: Crude oil prices dropped sharply with traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. There were reports that Iran was behind an attack on a cargo ship near the coast of Oman, which would be a violation of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Pr...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
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.