With fresh USDA data on crop production, quarterly stocks, winter wheat acreage, export sales and changes to supply/demand analyses all suspended by the government shutdown, guesswork has become temporarily respectable. While a great deal of that is being disseminated, very little of it is identified as guesswork by its sources. In the for-what-it-is-worth category, here are some of our own current guesses on these blocked topics as well as a few others. - The final U.S. 2018 corn production number will be around 14.520 billion bushels based on a yield of 177.5 bushels/acre (BPA), down a bit more than 100 million bushels and 1.4 BPA from the last USDA/NASS estimate. - The final U.S. soybean production number will be about 4.535 billion bu...
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...
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.