The Fed's announced tapering and its low interest rate commitment did nothing for grain and soy markets that for now are off in their own worlds. General Comments At the close of its two-day December FMOC meeting, the Fed announced it would begin the long-awaited tapering of its monthly bond buying campaign in January. In its third round of quantitative easing, the Fed has been buying $85 billion of mortgage securities and Treasury bonds each month. Another way to put it is that the Fed has been printing $85 billion per month and pumping it into the economy. The hope was that it would help stimulate economic activity and growth and reduce unemployment. Today it announced that it would reduce its monthly bond buying to $75 billion as a res...
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...
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.