Oil palms require fertilizer every three months to maintain productivity but Russia’s war in Ukraine has threatened world supplies and driven up prices. This is particularly hurting Indonesia, the world’s largest supplier of palm oil. The imposition of export restrictions by Jakarta drove down the price of palm fruit at the same time fertilizer fell into short supply, driving up the price by 72 percent. The palm plantation area and production output in Malaysia has generally been flatter than in Indonesia, where area has been expanding and output growing even faster due to the increased use of fertilizer. Fertilizer use in Indonesia grew by 18 percent over the past decade but was flat in Malaysia. As a result, Malaysia ha...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
A federal appeals court paused a USITC ruling against President Trump’s use of Section 122 to impose 10-percent global tariffs. A bipartisan group of 80 House members asked USTR to investigate specialty crop imports from Mexico for unfair trade practices. India notified the WT...
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 t...
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.