General Comments The weekly Export Sales report mostly fell below market expectations, but not by enough to be much of a market factor. Export sales in the soy complex continue to garner attention, however. USDA reported old crop soybean sales of 386,000 MT and new crop sales of 867,000. Total old crop soybean export commitments (open sales plus shipments) have now reached about 1.226 billion bushels versus USDA's prediction of 1.345 billion bushels for the entire 2012/13 year. Only 120 million bushels of additional export commitments are needed to reach USDA's goal. There are 30 weeks left in the soybean crop year, and if our arithmetic is correct, export sales need to average only 109,000 MT (4.0 million bushels) per week to meet it. D...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.