General Comments Markets were basically steady during much of the overnight trading hours with soybeans trading back and forth while corn and wheat were generally slightly lower. The closer we got to daylight, however, the weaker the markets got. By midmorning soybeans were down 17-18 cents, corn was down 10-12 cents and wheat was down double-digits in Chicago with smaller losses in KC and Mpls. Part of the selling was blamed on more "fiscal cliff" worries, but that didn't make sense with financial markets and crude oil slightly higher and the dollar slightly lower. People were not taking money off the table in those markets.The more plausible reason for the selling was that traders were taking some money off the table ahead of tomorro...
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.