General Comments Funds (and others) have been major sellers of grain and oilseed futures ahead of today's USDA acreage and quarterly stocks reports. The market was anticipating a big corn acreage numbers and a larger corn 1 March stocks numbers. They were right on the corn acreage estimate but very wrong on the stocks number. The soybean acreage number was well below expectations and stocks were slightly smaller. Today's USDA reports are fully covered in a separate analysis. The result was a rush to get back on the bull bus that saw soybeans open 40-50 higher, corn 25-30 higher, and wheat 20 higher in KC and Chicago but as much as 40 higher in Mpls. Markets came off those initial highs in the first 15-20 minutes of the session, but that...
Russian Grain Markets: 12–16 October 2026 During the week in review, the Russian grain market began recovering after an extended decline driven largely by Black Sea logistics bottlenecks, a good crop and weaker global demand in traditional Russian markets. Russia is beginning to harvest c...
What You Need to Know Today: Corn and soybeans were under heavy selling pressure as weaker (or at least as-expected) export demand runs into an accelerating harvest pace with more grain available in the spot market. Corn and soybean harvest progress remains below average across the U.S., espec...
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.