Wheat futures tried to sustain a small rally today, but that effort didn't uncover enough buying to offset the weakness in soybeans and eventual weakness in corn. General Comments Today being the last day of July as well as Friday perhaps brought a calmer trade to today's markets. Prices started slightly better overnight, but those small gains didn't last long in quiet trade. Soybeans led markets lower today after USDA announced the cancellation of 200,000 MT of old crop soybean sales to China. It also reported sales of 108,000 MT of corn to Mexico and 127,000 MT of wheat (white, hard red winter and hard red spring) to "unknown."Weather continues to look mostly benign across the U.S. August will start with above-normal temperatures and no...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...
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.