Regional News Ukraine is increasingly becoming the dominant supplier of grains from the Black Sea region. Ukrainian grain exports are up 49 percent YTD at 1.7 MMT, with wheat exports down just 3 percent YTD. Ukraine’s early-season exports have benefitted from Russia’s export taxes and tight Russian supplies/slow origination that are making Russian offers hard to find. The EU Commission’s MARS crop monitoring unit said recent heavy rains and flooding in France, Germany, and Ukraine will reduce wheat quality rather than yields. That would imply a higher supply of feed-grade wheat and possible supply tightness in milling-grade wheat for domestic use and export. The EU Commission pegged the EU-27 2021 whea...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Dry bulk markets were volatile but ultimately steady this week with notable differences in rate developments across vessel classes. The Capesize sector, which led the recent rally in freight rates with its dramatic surge, pulled back slightly amid more cautious chartering activity, partic...
Key Market Insights Macro markets delivered a full whipsaw today. Early in the session, crude oil had rallied back above $100/barrel as traders priced renewed concern over the U.S.-Iran standoff and potential supply risk through the Strait of Hormuz. That strength helped pull grains off their o...
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.