While South Africa has its biggest maize crop in about forty years and will once again be an exporter, it will have difficulty shipping to some maize-starved East African countries due to certain import restrictions. Regional Updates MIDDLE EAST/MEDITERRANEAN COMMENTS Egypt reports that flour subsidies will stop in the next month, which it hopes will reduce wheat imports by as much as 10 percent. The 2016 revaluation of the Egyptian pound has pushed inflation to over 30 percent per annum and caused the sales of low-cost subsidized bread to rise greatly. While the prices of most food items have increased to inflation levels or more, the subsidized bread price has remained stable. The government says that savings related to the flour subs...
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.
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...