South America While USDA cakewalked its estimates this week for South American soybean production, Conab made the deep cut, predicting that Brazil’s crop would be down 15 MMT to 125.4 MMT. Crops in the region are said to currently be in a “critical timeframe” where rain in the next week or two will determine the outcome. The Rosario Grain Exchange termed the Argentine crop as on the precipice of a “productive disaster” like the 2018 crop. Paraguay is already a “disaster” with production said to be off 50 percent, and of the remaining half, 75 percent is of bad quality. The tentativeness is revealed in Brazil’s export statistics that show first week February soybean shipments off 85 percent fr...
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
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.