Russian Grain Markets: 14–18 August 2023 Russian grain markets remained under the pressure of a good crop, higher freight rates, and ever-growing export duties. Since most of the pricing in country is based on the export marketplace in the Black Sea and Azov Sea, some regions are affected more and some, like Siberia, less. The ruble has fallen lower and lower during the past several weeks which in theory could help prices go up, but export duties are calculated in RUB. The process is well balanced, and the government is always on alert to nip a bull in the bud. Traders in the ports play a waiting game and are not in a hurry to increase their bids, especially when most of the multinational traders left the market and competitio...
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...
Key Takeaways: Drought remains a major threat to global agricultural production, particularly in regions with limited rainfall and growing water scarcity. Commercially available drought-tolerant traits in corn, soybeans, and wheat have generally delivered modest yield improvements, limiting th...
Russian Grain Markets: 8-12 June 2026 The Russian grain market was highly volatile during the week. The export market, the primary driver of domestic prices, remained stagnant, and bearish sentiment persisted. Weaker demand and expectations for a strong upcoming harvest encouraged exporters to...
From WPI Consulting
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.