This week provided a very good demonstration of how quickly attitudes and prices can change. The soybean rally continued to gain strength and set new highs, and corn even finally started to break out of the trading range it has occupied since the 2015 harvest was completed.Just last Monday, the vastly different positions that speculative funds had in commodity markets were discussed here. After holding big short positions in corn and wheat futures markets, they reversed to long positions in the soybean market two weeks ago. The lack of any fundamental trigger to force the funds to start to cover those shorts was also a topic in that day’s report. Planting progress was starting to accelerate across the Corn Belt, and it was too early to be c...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...
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.