A Roadmap to Better Decision Making

For some in the U.S. where the temperatures have been scorching hot, it might be hard to believe that tomorrow is just the first day of Summer! In the Northern Hemisphere, the start date of summer is based on the summer solstice, when the sun is in the most northern point from the Earth’s equator. This will also be the ...
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Changes in social patterns resulting from efforts to control COVID-19 are also affecting the electric power industry, and although it is still too early to determine with certainty how the efforts to reduce the spread of the pandemic are affecting the entire sector, the U.S. Energy Information Administration's short-term forecasts provide some perspective on the trends they are seeing. EIA ...
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CORN traders are focusing in on the extended U.S. weather forecast. With the USDA estimating +3.3 billion in ending stocks and suspect demand, bears say it will take a significant and wide-spread weather worry to dramatically rally price. Bulls believe the USDA is going to reduce planted acres so the balance sheet is going to shrink in less than two-weeks ...
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Coronavirus has no doubt changed the world, leaving business owners and investors alike the daunting task of figuring out which changes will stick and how they might shape consumer trends. New research from Euromonitor shows that the food and beverage industry might be the only industry to witness any growth at all in 2020. However, that growth probably won't be ...
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Argentina's recent announcement that it will "rescue" major oilseed crusher Vicentin is raising concerns about nationalizing the country's farming industry as the government faces a political storm set off by the move. The Argentine government says the state takeover is meant to save jobs while critics say it poses a threat to free markets and might be unconstitutional. Keep in ...
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We all know that the U.S. Midwest is the heart of farm country. In fact, in America’s midsection, nearly one-third of the population are farmers. Compare that to the coasts where only about one or two out of every 100 people work as farmers. Keep in mind, a farm is defined by the U.S. government as “any place from which ...
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Genetically modified mosquitoes are in the news again with new EPA permits making it possible the critters could be released in Florida and Texas this summer. Oxitec, the company behind the GM mosquitoes, was granted an experimental use permit to release millions of them into the Florida Keys and around Houston over the next two years in an effort to ...
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CORN bears are thinking the USDA could bump ending stocks higher in tomorrow's June report on another sizable reduction to ethanol demand. I've heard talk that the USDA will probably need to further reduce corn used for ethanol by -100 to -200 million bushels in the weeks ahead. Bulls are hoping that total U.S. production will eventually be adjusted lower ...
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Recently, the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) released its first-quarter 2020 results of the NCREIF Farmland Index, a widely relied-upon tool that includes data gathered from investment-grade U.S. farm properties. NCREIF uses the data to provide tools to institutional investors, giving them the ability to identify investment risks in the space, and the index has been increasingly ...
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Mink farmers in the Netherlands have been dealing with outbreaks of coronavirus but it's not the workers that are sick, it's the animals. Cases have been confirmed on at least nine mink farms since April and there are two instances where the mink may have passed the virus to humans. Of course the science is still out on all this ...
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