It was mostly a day in the red as coronavirus anxiety continues to haunt investors. Fear of betting against calamity is understandable since a story of outright disaster is easy to imagine. Rabobank predicts another four months of supply chain disruptions except that both nearby and more distant futures contracts are bearing losses. In the SRW contract, at one point today, nine SRW contracts were in the red but July 2021 showed a modest gain on small volume. By the end of the day, it was only the distant contracts losing value. UNCTAD says that China’s exports of manufactured goods will be down $50 billion this year. The effects of COVID-19 will reverberate through the global economy for many months to come. One notable observation i...
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
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.