Russian Grain Markets: 4 - 8 May 2026 During the week under review, the Russian grain market began showing more bullish sentiment despite the traditionally slow pace of business during the May holiday period. Russia celebrates several holidays during early May, with Victory Day on 9 May being the most significant. This year, the holiday extended through 11 May because 9 May fell on a weekend. As a result, many businesses closed early, while customs offices and banks remained shut on Monday. Russian consultancy IKAR reduced Russia’s wheat export potential for the current season to 44.5 MMT from 46 MMT. Why are Russian analysts becoming more pessimistic despite strong recent export volumes and continued global demand? First, analysts do...
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.