Macroeconomics Food Inflation for October Spikes to 15.5 Percent With retail pork prices rising in October by a staggering 101.3 percent, China’s food costs were up 15.5 percent compared with October 2018. This is the largest annualized increase since June 2011, when monthly food prices jumped by just under 15 percent from June 2010. October marked eight straight months of rising pork prices. Excluding food costs, China’s inflation was actually fairly modest with core consumer prices up by just 1.5 percent. Retail sales were up in September year-on-year by 7.8 percent and month-on-month by .7 percent. Consumer confidence also ticked up to 124.1 in September from 122.4 in August, as the country prepared for its 70th Anni...
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
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.