Over the weekend I received e-mails from three Southern Hemisphere farmers whom I have known for many years. I thought their comments were worth sharing in view of the current tight world supply situation and the fact the soybean market has penciled in (and is counting on) record planted acres and yields in South America. Here are their latest thoughts. Bahia, Brazil "It started raining on 2 November and has not stopped yet. I think we have only had two days without rain. Over 300 millimeters by now, 12 inches already. The forecast is for little rain this week and starting on Thursday lots in the forecast. I got the 30-day forecast and [it calls predicts] rain every day. [I have] about 70 percent of soya in the ground. Nothing of corn y...
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...
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...
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.