It's been a pretty amazing month for the market bears. It's also been a pretty amazing month for the world's farmers, most of whom are nearly always some degree of bullish. The November series of USDA reports were mostly bearish with bigger corn and soybean yields in the U.S., and a record soybean crop predicted for South America. A few less harvested acres and increased demand offset some of the big U.S. corn and soybean yield increases. The next blow to the markets came last Friday when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its 2014 targets for the renewable fuels mandates. On the surface, there is no way to slice those targets other than bearish. They will eventually mean steady corn-based ethanol production at best a...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
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...
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.