Policy and Culture A Lunar New Year to Remember This past Saturday marked the first day of China’s Lunar New Year, which ushered in the year of the rat. The week-long holiday in most years marks the largest annual migration in the world, as Chinese citizens make roughly three billion trips over the course of early January through mid-February, when the Lantern Festival occurs, to celebrate with friends and family. The rapid onset of a new coronavirus in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province has altered that tradition significantly. The virus has infected 6,057 individuals worldwide, including 5,970 in China, according to the World Health Organization, prompting the largest quarantine since SARS. With China’s central government...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Key Market Insights Macro markets delivered a full whipsaw today. Early in the session, crude oil had rallied back above $100/barrel as traders priced renewed concern over the U.S.-Iran standoff and potential supply risk through the Strait of Hormuz. That strength helped pull grains off their o...
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.