Russian Grain Markets: 17 – 21 February 2025 The market remained bullish with some regional deviations. Corn and barley prices are frozen. The export market remains the key driver, and the world is watching several factors including remaining stocks of wheat as well as the status of the winter wheat crop. With the recent geopolitical moves concerning the war in Ukraine and negotiations between Russia and the U.S., the world has noticed several dramatic changes in the attitude to this war which is also affecting many economic sectors of life in Russia. The Russian RUB continued recovering after a prolonged devaluation of the U.S. dollar and the Chinese yuan. Natural oil prices also recovered to a certain extent helping the Russian econ...
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.