USDA confirmed last Friday, 31 October, that despite the shutdown several key reports will be issued, including the November Cattle on Feed report, scheduled for 21 November. There will be no data from the October report, but that information could be available through the month-to-month...
Heading into next week’s (mercifully) planned USDA Crop Production and WASDE reports, a key focus of the markets has been forecasting the agency’s yield numbers. Over the past five years, USDA has exhibited a tendency to reduce its forecast of the corn and soybean yield, harve...
Trade was once again at the forefront of the CBOT’s trade on Wednesday, with reductions in Chinese tariffs, rumors of Chinese buying, and a dimming political outlook for President Trump’s tariff regime being the most salient factors. China announced today that it will cut tari...
IEEPA Alternatives The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments today challenging President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to unilaterally set tariffs on ther countries. Mr. Trump characterized the High Court’s decision as involving, “lit...
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.