The CBOT continued its mid-week trends into the week’s end with corn and wheat futures posting another higher day with short covering and technical, speculative buying offering support. The soy complex struggled for the day and all three components of the crush ended lower as the weekend forecast favors more rains for Brazil, though volumes will still be below normal. Cattle and lean hog futures turned lower to end a week that posted meaningful gains with weakness in the cash markets weighing on trader sentiment. Overall, one got the sense the markets were following their mid-week trends with little fresh news to justify a course deviation. This is the time of year when grain markets tend to seasonally strengthen and, except for the t...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. launches naval escort operations in the Strait of Hormuz as Iran attacks UAE oil infrastructure, escalating geopolitical risk and supporting energy and broader commodity markets Biofuel demand entering uncharted territory, with soyoil valuation increasingly di...
The Middle East is said to be undergoing a transformation as economic priorities transcend security concerns. This is evidenced by diversification away from oil and the UAE’s departure from OPEC. Meanwhile, the Palestine issue has been deprioritized, and Iran has emerged as more destabili...
All eyes are shifting to the Senate following the House passage of a farm bill last Thursday. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas) is targeting the end of May or early June for a bill markup. According to Boozman, the House “going ahead and passing something was re...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.