The ability of EU and/or Black Sea origins to price the value of wheat in world trade makes U.S. prices much less relevant to global wheat markets than they once were.We have always been fond of wheat, and much of our merchandizing career in the grain business involved wheat exports. In our early years, wheat dominated the world grain trade and the U.S. dominated world wheat trade. This was due in no small part to the PL 480 program first passed in 1954 under which recipient countries could buy and pay for certain U.S. agricultural commodities with their own currencies or under concessional credit terms. Wheat was by far the largest commodity exported under this program. No doubt, our fondness for it originated with the outsized importance...
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.