Market participation and trading volume are both usually light over the Christmas holiday, and that should also be the case though the New Year. Meaningful news will be even harder to find if the U.S. government’s partial shutdown continues for much more than a few days. Although we do not want to admit relying on USDA for market information and prefer to disagree with its calculations, the reality is that those are usually the best numbers available. The sheer size of USDA and the extent of its reach is often overlooked. However, this isn’t a story of praise for USDA. Instead, the point is that there will be no USDA reports/information released until Congress and the president reach an agreement to restart the government. Fol...
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
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.