Today’s USDA/FAS export sales report for the week ending 8 March showed the expected trend of large sales for corn, soybeans and soy products but a very slim amount for wheat. The standout development was the soaring corn sales of 2,505,100 MT for 2017/18 plus 100,000 MT for 2018/19. That is the largest they have been on a weekly basis in many years. Exporters also reported quite large corn loadings for the week at 1,406,330 MT, the most since the week ending 5 May 2017. U.S. corn has been the cheapest feed grain available since about the first of the year, which began to quickly translate into a higher volume of export sales that have now exceeded 1 MMT for the last nine weeks. The reported volume for that period totals about 16.6 M...
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.