Higher Cotton Production Could Bring Prices Down The land planted to cotton in India has increased 18.62 percent to 12.1 million hectares in 2017/18 versus 10.2 million hectares in 2016/17. Farmers shifted to cotton as they were unable to make a profit last year with other crops, mainly pulses and oilseeds. The Ministry of Agriculture, government of India (GOI) data of 6 October indicates the country is expected to produce 33.09 million bales (170 kg each) this year, up 2.53 percent against 32.273 million bales in 2016/17. However, GOI’s first estimate of the 2017/18 cotton production is much lower than that of the Cotton Association of India (CAI), which is projecting a total 37.5 million bales due to the expanded planted area. The...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at 3.75 to 4.0 percent Wednesday, with two officials dissenting in favor of a 25-basis-point increase. The Fed upgraded its assessment of economic growth from "solid" to "strong" but adopted a more patient approa...
Key Takeaways: Expected growth in U.S. soybean crushing capacity and output, driven by biofuel demand, will increase domestic soymeal supplies, with production growth significantly outpacing demand. WPI forecasts soymeal production increasing from 65.8 million short tons in 2026/27 to 70.5 mil...
Russian Grain Markets: 19–23 October 2026 The Russian grain market continued its recovery during the week, although prices remained volatile across regions. Wheat was notably bullish, while feed barley and corn were slower to appreciate, primarily because of weaker export demand amid logi...