The June retail sales report beat consensus expectations, rising 0.6 percent. Moreover, it was a strong report, with 10 out of 13 of the sales categories increasing. The largest increase was in the auto sector, a traditionally volatile category. June sales were up 1.2 percent, which came after a 3.8 percent drop in May, though the May report numbers were revised up in the June report to a much smaller drop. Astonishingly, auto sales are now up 6.5 percent over the past year. Excluding auto sales, and the two other volatile categories, building materials and gas stations, the “core” retail sales posted a 0.5 percent increase. These “core” sales are up 4.5 percent in the past year, which is above the 3.9 pe...
What You Need to Know Today: The Brazilian real surged to start the week after a surprise election result in which right-wing Flavio Bolsonaro won the first round of the election. The swing in the U.S. dollar/Brazilian real (USD/BRL) exchange rate caused soybeans to jump sharply higher in earl...
Key Takeaways: Harvest pressure is fundamentally a timing issue: supply arrives much faster than demand can adjust, creating temporary weakness that can occur across crops and regions. The intensity of that pressure depends less on crop size alone than on how quickly grain moves into the syste...
Pork packer margins closed out September as positive, marking an improvement in a challenging 2026. According to Sterling Marketing, for the week ending 26 September, pork packer margins were $6.98 per head, which is up from a loss of $0.13 the previous week, more than double the margin of $3.9...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.