In January 1980, President Carter decided to punish Russia for invading Afghanistan. That action left U.S. grain companies holding sales on the books to Russia for billions of bushels of wheat and corn that they could not ship and had already purchased from farmers. President Carter made all of those contracts worthless with a stroke of the pen. The immediate and correct response from grain companies was to pull all of their cash bids to those farmers. They had no choice with no place to go with another single bushel. This embargo followed six or seven years of enthusiasm about U.S. export potential based on the initial grain sales to Russia, which prompted the unprecedented expansion of capacity at virtually every U.S. export range. Those...
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...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.