With harvest beginning to pick up along with USDA’s quarterly stocks report and final small grain summary due out on 29 September, there is little incentive to establish new positions. The result is the sort of listless, choppy, low volume trade that occurred today. General Comments Grain and soybean futures prices traded slightly lower overnight, taking back some of Wednesday’s gains amid a modest increase in trading volume. Those slightly lower prices continued to prevail early in the day session, but volume slackened. About mid-session, prices recovered enough to push into the green, and there they stayed for most of the remaining session. Basically, it was a dull session in which buyers and sellers appeared equally disinterested. With...
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.