General Comments: As wildfires engulfed parts southern California today, it seems fitting to use a firefighting adage to describe the grain markets. Firefighting, it has been said, is 98 percent boring drudgery and 2 percent excitement. The grains markets appear to be offering traders the same deal, and today was part of the 98 percent. Corn, wheat, and soybean futures all traded a narrow range today, biding time until Thursday’s WASDE report from USDA. Soybeans were the most active contract, trading an 11-cent range, but finished the day in an unexciting manner, down fractionally. The USDA Export Inspections report showed 20.6 million bushels of corn were shipped abroad last week, along with 54.6 million bushels of soybeans...
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.