Soybeans Last week was another boring one for soybean trading. Brazil’s market is at a standstill with almost no trades, despite some cargoes for September and October FOB. Chinese buyers are totally silent since they have zero or negative crush margins, leaving no company willing to take the risk of buying. The ongoing trade war adds another huge dimension of uncertainty as its intensity seems to gyrate daily. In the meantime, Chinese crushers have plenty of soybeans in stocks at ports plus big shipment volumes arriving that were shipped in July. The market believes that Chinese crushers are fully covered for August, and almost covered for September. From October onwards they are widely open, but they still have time and things can...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
We have described the long-term investment climate in crop and livestock production, using data primarily from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The data provided background on the current investment climate and outlook for agricultural capital formation. Our conclusion was that investment...
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.