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21 April 2013 – Policy

Pollan’s Productivity Buster

By Gary Blumenthal for Ag Perspectives

Foodie Michael Pollan continues his anti-agribusiness diatribe in his latest book, "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation." Noting that people currently choose not to spend their time cooking, he would manipulate their freedom of choice by placing a tax on prepared food, thereby forcing everyone to cook their own foods using untaxed raw ingredients. Not only will they get skinny, but they also will destroy the evil empire once and for all. Pollan even has advice for First Lady Michelle Obama. He tells her to stop wasting her time talking to food manufacturers about tweaking their products and instead use her bully pulpit to promote laborious home cooking.If Pollan's dream were to come true, which it cannot, the economic impact would...

TAGS – Softs
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feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat
02 March 2026 – Analysis

CFTC COT Report Analysis

By Matt Herrington for Ag Perspectives

Friday’s CFTC report showed funds further expanding long positions across the major ag futures contracts for the sixth straight week. Funds added 176,000 contracts (60 percent) to their all-ags net long position, with strong and mostly uniform buying across the ag sector.  The soy co...

TAGS – Feed Grains, Soy & Oilseeds, Wheat, Livestock, Energy, Softs, North America
feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat
22 February 2026 – Analysis

CFTC COT Report Analysis

By Matt Herrington for Ag Perspectives

Friday’s CFTC report showed funds expanding long positions across the major ag futures contracts for the fifth straight week. Funds added 95,000 contracts to their all-ags net long position, with buying in the soy complex driving about two-thirds of the increase.  The soy complex saw...

TAGS – Feed Grains, Soy & Oilseeds, Wheat, Livestock, Energy, Softs, North America
feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat
17 February 2026 – Analysis

CFTC COT Report Analysis

By Matt Herrington for Ag Perspectives

The attached PDF offers graphical depiction and seasonal analysis of managed money and commercial traders' net position in key agricultural commodity markets. The data is, of course, taken from the CFTC's weekly Commitment of Traders report, using the futures only data. WPI recently completed a...

TAGS – Feed Grains, Soy & Oilseeds, Wheat, Livestock, Energy, Softs, North America
feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat
02 March 2026 – Analysis

CFTC COT Report Analysis

By Matt Herrington for Ag Perspectives

Friday’s CFTC report showed funds further expanding long positions across the major ag futures contracts for the sixth straight week. Funds added 176,000 contracts (60 percent) to their all-ags net long position, with strong and mostly uniform buying across the ag sector.  The soy co...

TAGS – Feed Grains, Soy & Oilseeds, Wheat, Livestock, Energy, Softs, North America
feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat
22 February 2026 – Analysis

CFTC COT Report Analysis

By Matt Herrington for Ag Perspectives

Friday’s CFTC report showed funds expanding long positions across the major ag futures contracts for the fifth straight week. Funds added 95,000 contracts to their all-ags net long position, with buying in the soy complex driving about two-thirds of the increase.  The soy complex saw...

TAGS – Feed Grains, Soy & Oilseeds, Wheat, Livestock, Energy, Softs, North America
feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat
17 February 2026 – Analysis

CFTC COT Report Analysis

By Matt Herrington for Ag Perspectives

The attached PDF offers graphical depiction and seasonal analysis of managed money and commercial traders' net position in key agricultural commodity markets. The data is, of course, taken from the CFTC's weekly Commitment of Traders report, using the futures only data. WPI recently completed a...

TAGS – Feed Grains, Soy & Oilseeds, Wheat, Livestock, Energy, Softs, North America
feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat
09 February 2026 – Analysis

CFTC COT Report Analysis

By Matt Herrington for Ag Perspectives

WPI recently expanded our analysis of the weekly CFTC Commitments of Traders data to include reports on the regime (trending, cyclical, or transition) of each commodity we include. This addition will make it easier for clients to draw actionable inferences from the data that can support trading...

TAGS – Feed Grains, Soy & Oilseeds, Wheat, Livestock, Softs, North America
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From WPI Consulting

Communicating importance of value-added products

Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.

Learn about WPI Consulting

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