Argentine Crops The needed rains did not arrive in the northern area of Argentina, where the present lack of moisture remains critical. The expected storm also skipped Cordoba province where drought is affecting the winter crops and will probably soon delay the seeding of the summer crops.The market is expecting that about 10 percent of the wheat area could be negatively affected, although it is still too early to know the final outcome on production. Fortunately, all of Buenos Aires province did receive a little rain because this is where the largest wheat volume originates; about 45 percent of Argentina's total wheat is seeded in Buenos Aires province.The soil moisture over the core corn area, west of Buenos Aires, Sante Fe and Cordo...
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
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.