Today is sort of New Year's Day for many U.S. commodity futures markets, particularly grain and soy markets. With the long weekend and without an overnight e-session last night, they began trading for 2012 only this morning. Happy New Year to you, markets! With adverse South American weather dominating, grain and soy markets have started off the New Year with the proverbial bang.We use one very unscientific signal to confirm the existence of a drought. When dry conditions exist, and forecast after forecast for rain consistently comes up short (as was the case for Southern Brazil and Argentina again last weekend), we take this as evidence of a drought. There no longer is any question that crops in southern Brazil and especially in Argentin...
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...
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.