Russian Grain Markets: 8-15 May 2012 GRAINS AND PRODUCTS Planting Updates as of 11 May 2012Russian Grain Export UpdateAccording to First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, Russian wheat exports have amounted to 20 MMT since the beginning of the current marketing year (1 July 2011). That makes Russia the second-largest wheat exporter in the world. Total grain exports have reached 25 MMT. Corn export volumes are growing as well; Russia exported 342,980 MT of corn in April 2012, the largest volume in the 2011/12 season (71 percent more than March 2012 exports and more than 10 times the volume exported in April 2010). The largest importers of Russian corn in April were Spain (36 percent of total volume) and Turkey (23 percent).Despite the...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
Key Takeaways: WPI’s new EU rapeseed crushing margin models point to weaker processing returns over the next four months due to higher rapeseed procurement costs and weaker product values. Statistical forecasts call for German crushing margins to decline from €181/MT to €...
Key Takeaways: The tariff burden rose sharply in 2025 and 2026: the effective rate on imports in HTS Chapters 1–24 increased from 1.53 percent in 2024 to 6.11 percent in 2025, before averaging 5.68 percent in January–August 2026. Headline rates tell only part of the story: exemptio...
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.