In these days of the USDA blackout, the soybean market is left to focus on the prospects from U.S. China trade negotiations and South American weather. Of course, this situation would not change much if USDA were back in business as those would remain the key issues, but its final U.S. soybean production estimate and export sales data would at least broaden the conversation. Trying to analyze and predict what will happen in each case is made more complex because they are rather tightly connected by the 25 percent tariff imposed by China on U.S. soybean imports and how that tariff has distorted trade flows. Thus, Chinese trade issues and South American weather have become common threads for the soybean market – futures and cash. Predi...
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.