The German leak of one-third of a 1,500 page Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) involved more a gripe about the investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) language than any agriculture provision. Geopolitical Impacts Commodity markets closed mixed today, but Wall Street took a dive in reaction to news that Ukrainian forces had attacked their Russian counterparts in a border skirmish. Major hedge fund managers tended to dismiss any broader implications from the Black Sea dustup, while the broader market showed concern. However, those in the commodity pits that stayed focused on the fundamentals likely have it more correct. Ned Davis Research examined a century's worth of geopolitical crises and found that, on average...
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
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.