General Comments The Turkish attack on a Syrian military installation may be part of the reason for today's increase in gasoline and crude oil prices, but weakness in the dollar is also adding support to global energy prices. Uncertainty is likely to keep the U.S. dollar weak all the way into the 6 November presidential election.The increasing prospects that Romney may be elected and support Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could compound the anxious paranoia of the Iranian government. The Iranian government is already in trouble as its currency lost a third of its value just last week. Such factors of uncertainty play into the standard seasonal behavior of crude oil contracts bottoming out around the end of September and then...
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.