The Biden Administration announced that it will ensure enforcement of the Phase One trade deal with China but that will not be much of a challenge when it comes to agriculture. U.S. sales to the Middle Kingdom are up over 100 percent. The increases include a 194 percent spike in soybeans sales and a 182 percent jump in corn sales. There have also been large increases in sales of products such as cotton, meat, ethanol, and tree nuts. The larger question is what happens in 2022 should Chinese farmers harvest bumper crops this fall. Marketing year sales are already lagging that of this time last year. There will be no trade agreement to blame for being violated since it expires at the end of 2021. If sales are lower in 2022, the politic...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
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.