The CBOT featured spread trade on Wednesday with corn and wheat gaining on soybeans. Traders were revering old bull soybean/wheat and soybean/corn spreads, which kept soybean values under pressure. Trading volumes were low and spreading/position evening was the theme of the day. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that the U.S. and China will hold “high level” trade talks on 15 August. The discussions will include USTR Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and will reportedly focus on the Phase One trade deal. The USDA FAS announced a daily “flash” export sale of 192,000 MT of soybeans sold to China for delivery in 2020/21. The sale was the first in the past week and speculation remains that Mo...
What You Need to Know Today: Crude oil prices extended their rally today, supported by several developments, including escalating Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure and growing concerns about supply disruptions. The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to remove 50 perc...
Key Takeaways: The agricultural trade surplus has become a sizable deficit: the balance swung from a $40.1 billion surplus in 2011 to a $40.7 billion deficit in 2025. Imports kept growing while exports lost momentum: between 2020 and 2025, agricultural imports increased 45 percent, compa...
USDA released its October Cattle on Feed report Friday, showing 11.4 million cattle in feedlots with capacity for 1,000 head or more, slightly below last year. September placements were the lowest for the month since records began in 1996, marking the third consecutive month of placements sett...
Regional News Dry weather across the UK and Europe is becoming increasingly concerning for the 2027 crops as planting intentions are lowered amid dry soil conditions. Delayed sowing or establishment under adverse conditions could leave crops more vulnerable to frost/freeze events and dise...
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.