The CBOT started the week on a bearish note with expectations for strong planting progress across the U.S. and sluggish demand weighing on markets. Friday’s CFTC report that showed continued fund short selling in major ag commodities also helped keep markets on the defensive to start the week. Dryness is still an issue for parts of the Eastern Corn Belt with little or no rain realized over the weekend and another dry week forecast, but traders seem to be getting more comfortable with this early-season dryness that usually doesn’t impact corn or soybean yields. Amid large U.S. acreages, competition from Brazil, and few weather issues in major global crop growing regions, the long-term outlook for ag commodities remains lower, a v...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. naval escorts through the Strait of Hormuz and renewed Iranian attacks on vessels and UAE infrastructure are sustaining geopolitical risk across energy and commodity markets Broad profit taking and weaker crude oil triggered a pullback across grains, signaling...
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health held a hearing on legislative proposals concerning food regulation and oversight. The hearing was focused on a wide range of bills, in keeping with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, ranging from anti–plant-based dairy produc...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Egypt and Algeria, in addition to Israel, are being monitored by Ukraine as possible destinations for grain taken by Russia from occupied Ukrainian regions. In April, Egypt had said that it would “stop accepting such shipmen...
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.