The Pro Farm crop tour was completed this week and the results were interpreted as bullish for soybeans and bearish for corn. The bullish soybean story is the below- average soybean pod count across most of the western Corn Belt. We alerted clients to this problem last week. In fact, we believe the problem is worse than indicated by the Pro Farmer tour. The pod counts are compared to the three-year average. The error here is that last year was a crop disaster for corn and soybeans because of the drought. This year's counts look even worse if you throw out last year's tour numbers and use the previous three-year average. On top of that, the western Corn Belt is going to cook this weekend and for much of next week. That will result in...
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...
Markets are getting into the Halloween spirit, handing out more tricks than treats. There has been some encouraging news, but it hasn’t been enough to slow the broader slide. Now buyers need to show up with something other than another “Charlie Brown” rock for the bag. Somethi...
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.