A tariff truce, export inspections, WASDE and crop progress. Monday was action packed and the much-anticipated USDA May WASDE report did not disappoint. In general, it was mixed for corn, bullish for soybeans, and bearish for wheat. In fact, all three major wheat contracts registered new contract lows; cattle printed new contract highs. There was good volume across most of the markets reflecting everything that had to get unpacked. More on the WASDE below but first the large macro news. The U.S. and China announced a 90-day truce in the tariff war. During the truce period, the U.S. tariff on Chinese goods will drop from 145 percent to 30 percent and the Chinese tariff on U.S. goods will be lowered to 10 percent from 125 percent. The d...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.