Regional News European consultancy COCERAL issued its latest series of crop forecasts on 25 September. COCERAL left its forecast of the EU wheat crop nearly unchanged at 129.2 MMT, while lowering the EU 2020 barley crop to 61.3 MMT, down from 62.5 MMT in earlier forecasts. The EU 2020 corn crop was pegged at 62.8 MMT, down from prior forecasts of 64.6 MMT due to hot dry weather across most of the major producing countries. The EU-27 rapeseed crop was estimated at 16.18 MMT, in-line with prior forecasts and up slightly from 2019’s 15.25 MMT crop. Drought continues to afflict most of eastern Europe, southern Ukraine, and southern Russia. The crop-masked NDVI (a statistical measure of crop health as measured by satel...
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
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.