Yesterday’s crop progress report was gasoline on the fire for futures markets. The corn planting figure was lower than expected with key growing states (Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio) well behind their typical paces. More concerningly, soybean planting is also behind schedule, perhaps indicating that fewer corn acres will be switched to that crop than previously thought. The only certainty out of this week’s report is that prevented planting acres will be the largest in a decade or more. The market reacted to the crop progress report with an unusually active overnight session that saw corn, wheat, and soybeans all trade sharply higher. The knee-jerk reaction was to add more weather premia to prices, which is exactly what traders...
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.