Corn and soybeans traded much the way they did in the overnight session, though wheat posted something of a reversal. There were flash sales of corn to Mexico and Colombia but no new soybeans sales, which was bearish. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is reportedly rising as a lead policy spokesperson for the Trump Administration, says China could compete its purchase of 12 MMT by February, which would be just ahead of the onslaught of South America’s new crop beans. A market view on this is that China buying over half the world’s soybeans strictly on a counter-seasonal basis benefited the sellers. Making purchases more on a head-to-head basis would better benefit the monopoly buyer. Market attention is now turni...
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.