The big rally in corn futures prices during the past two months does stand out and has analysts asking themselves if this marching bull corn market can be fundamentally justified.So far, the 2014 low price for the CME May corn futures contract has been the $4.1725 of 9 January. Almost exactly two months later, the contract's 2014 high of $4.9725 was reached on 7 March. In that two-month period, May corn marched $0.80 higher in an unusually steady progression. One would have to go back six months to the early days of last September when there were still questions and concerns about the 2013 corn crop to find prices for the lead corn futures contract as high as what the corn market produced last Friday. Since those questions and concerns were...
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.