Tuesday’s rumors had the Russian government taking steps to slow the frantic pace of wheat exports. Today it became clear that it did act but not in a way that was expected. The government apparently has closed about 30 interior grain elevators in Rostov and Krasnodar for three months. This move is described as punishment for the issuance of faulty and inaccurate quality certification for grain (mostly wheat) that was shipped from the facilities in question. That seems an odd penalty for misrepresenting grain quality. It is widely believed among Russian exporters that shutting these facilities through the end of the year, and thus significantly cutting the capacity for interior wheat origination, has been done to curtail wheat exports...
What You Need to Know Today: As was widely expected, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points to a target range of 3.75–4.00 percent, its first rate increase since 2023, as policymakers respond to persistent inflation pressures. The Fed also signaled that additi...
Key Takeaways: USDA data access is equal; the ability to use it is not. Larger operations can afford experts who turn public reports into business decisions. Analytical capacity is the true advantage. Forecasts matter only when converted into profit, purchasing, and risk-management decisions...
Russian Grain Markets: 7–11 September 2026 During the first week of September, the Russian grain market remained volatile but predominantly bearish. Among the few commodities that continued to show a bullish trend was rye, which is in short supply this year and has few offers available. I...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.