Regional News Global grain and oilseed markets are reacting to several shocks that occurred last week, most notably the EPA’s surprise bullish renewable fuel obligations for the U.S. and the Israel-Iran conflict. Oil futures are sharply higher on the Middle East conflict that threatens to draw the U.S. and other nations into a regional conflict. Too, rising energy prices are causing prices for fertilizer to increase and the location of the Israel-Iran conflict threatens the resumption of freight traffic through the Red Sea again. Trade body COCERAL raised its forecast of the 2025 combined grain harvest to 300.7 MMT due to larger soft wheat and barley output in southern Europe and France. The EU corn crop was trimmed due to...
What You Need to Know Today: The U.S. dollar continued to strengthen Thursday as persistent inflation reinforced expectations for additional Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. Higher Treasury yields have helped support the dollar, potentially reducing the competitiveness of U.S. agricultural...
Key Takeaways: Dry bulk freight markets were stronger this week, but the rally was uneven and due to divergent dynamics across basins and vessel classes. Panamax markets were broadly higher, but Atlantic grain demand was primarily responsible while Asian activity was subdued. That trend...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.