Politics and not economics drove the White House announcement today to approve year-round E15 fuel sales under an emergency waiver of the Clean Air Act’s requirements. Ethanol makes sense as an octane booster but less so as a gasoline substitute. Blending at the E15 level is already allowed in winter months and yet its use remains very low. The EIA has no measurement of E15 (or E85) use, but their best guess is 200 million gallons of E15, or 0.148 percent of all gasoline sold. Meanwhile, EIA says that “Almost all [95%] U.S. gasoline is blended with 10 percent ethanol.” Corn only gained about 10 cents/bushel today despite a policy announcement that theoretically could have sent it into the stratosphere. Boosting etha...
The corn and soy complex closed higher, with the wheat market mixed, as winter wheat closed up but spring wheat and livestock ended lower. Part of the strength for corn and soybeans may have been a weather premium, as crop planting has started out fast but warm weather has been slow to develop...
Real GDP grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026, slightly below the consensus expectation of 2.3 percent but above the 0.5 percent growth in Q4 2025. The GDP number matches the average annualized pace of growth since the peak back in late 2007, right before the Financial P...
Reflect for a moment on what you eat. There is a lot of advice out there in the ether about what you should eat, but really, what do you currently eat and how much? The good people at the USDA have some data for you, to help you answer that question. USDA says that we eat quite a bit of meat. L...
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.