Russian Grain Markets: 6–10 May 2024 This year’s spring weather in Russia is abnormal; last week frost was registered across European Russia ranging from Smolensk all the way to Volga Valley. Some nighttime temperatures were as low as minus 12 degrees Celsius which is catastrophic for some crops. Some European Russia territories saw snow on the ground. There were snowstorms in the Ural Mountains. This weather will likely impact Russia’s previously optimistic crop forecasts; however, it is too early to say to what extent. One thing is clear though, crop forecasts will have to be recalculated. Russian analysts believe the wheat crop may lose as much as 5 MMT which will bring production down to 86 MMT. Overall, the 2024 gr...
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.