It was an erratic and somewhat volatile day of trade for grain and soy futures. Financial markets also experienced an uptick in volatility, and this may have rubbed off on grains and the soy complex. Overnight trade was relatively calm, but prices across the board were slightly firmer. They were buoyed by hope that the second session of high-level U.S./Chinese trade talks, which were to get underway today in Washington, would lead to some progress in narrowing the wide gap between the two sides. Markets also hoped for clarity regarding the rumored swap of relief from U.S. sanctions for Chinese telecom firm ZTE in exchange for taking possible Chinese tariffs on U.S. ag products off the table (or something like that). Unfortunately, neither...
What You Need to Know Today: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured reelection on Sunday, defeating right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro despite trailing in the first round of voting. The surprise victory triggered a sharp selloff in Brazilian financial market...
The 2026 midterm elections are a week from tomorrow, but early voting has been taking place for weeks. At stake is control of Congress, including the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are contested, and the Senate, where approximately one-third of the seats are up for election. Farm...
Key Takeaways: Total U.S. crop acres (excluding hay) are forecast to expand fractionally this year due to greater oilseed crop and winter wheat plantings. One of the key drivers of this year’s crop outlook is input costs, and crops with a lower cost profile have an advantage in producers...
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.