China on a Soybean Buying Spree The smaller soybean crop in South America clearly has gotten the attention of Chinese soybean buyers. To make sure they get the soybeans they need for the remainder of this year, Chinese crushers have stepped up their U.S. soybean purchases for shipment in the current and next marketing year.Today's USDA export sales report indicated U.S. porters last week sold 117,300 MT of U.S. soybeans for shipment to China in the current marketing year and an additional 675,000 MT for shipment in the 2012/13 marketing year. In addition, exporters made sales of 147,500 MT of old crop soybean sales and 394,000 MT of new crop sales to unknown destinations. Most likely some of those sales are to China as well.This week USD...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.