General Comments For the first time this growing season, the trade came back to work Sunday evening and noticed that weekend rain across the Corn Belt was actually better than expected. Approximately 15-20 percent of the Corn Belt saw some half-inch rains, while another 20 percent saw very small amounts. In addition, the 11- to 14-day forecasts (at least the GFS model) looked like it offered chances for some significant rains across the northern and eastern Corn Belt. Corn and soybeans opened sharply lower Sunday afternoon with soybeans quickly dropping to 50-cent-plus losses and corn down 15-20 cents. Those were the lows of last night and today. Corn made it back to just a few pennies lower on the day, but soybeans stayed 35-40 cents...
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...
From WPI Consulting
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.