Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Iran remains the largest importer of Brazil maize at about 6.1 MMT followed by Egypt at about 5.3 MMT then Saudi Arabia at 1.5 MMT, Morocco at 1.1 MMT, Algeria at 1.0 MMT and Bangladesh at 770,000 MT. Brazil exported 29.6 MMT of m...
Beef packer margins rose for a third consecutive week, climbing $52/head to $115 and hitting the strongest profitability since mid-2023. The gain came amid a sharp $7.65/cwt decline in live cattle prices and continued firmness in the beef cutout. The spread between the cutout and fed cattle val...
The CBOT saw muted and mostly lower trade to open the week of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. The day’s trade was predominantly weaker as technical factors and a lack of news immediately relevant to the grain markets prompted fund selling. Monday’s news did include USDA confirmation...
Update for 28 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where o...
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.