The U.S. was once the largest wheat flour exporter in the world followed by Canada, but that trade now belongs to a different part of the world – Southwest and Central Asia. Turkey and Kazakhstan are the #10 and #13 wheat producing countries, respectively, but together they control 37 percent of global flour exports. Turkey exports 65 percent more flour than the U.S. did at its peak. Much of U.S. flour exports in the 1950s and 1960s was composed of food aid, whereas today Turkey is situated more strategically to major importers, though some believe unfair trade is occurring. Most of the flour exports by the U.S. are now to neighboring Mexico and Canada. Bilateral flour trade between Canada and the U.S. peaked in 2016 but U.S. s...
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...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.