Happy New Year! Corn and wheat were steady overnight with soybeans 5-6 cents higher. The overnight soy complex optimism was the result of weekend tweets by President Trump that expressed great hopefulness over the China-U.S. trade talks. The trade talk optimism was apparently based on a phone call between President Trump and President Xi. U.S. trade officials will be in Beijing next week for face-to-face negotiations and that meeting in Beijing is to be followed by a return visit to Washington. The market’s tone changed at the open, with wheat quickly dropping to losses of 5-7 cents and corn down 2 cents or so. Soybean futures dropped a few of cents lower as well. Trading volume today was expectedly light, and markets traded a...
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.