Regional News President Trump announced 30 percent tariffs on imports from the EU effective 1 August even as the EU and U.S. trade negotiations continue. Western Europe saw heavy and mostly beneficial precipitation last week, but a dry trend is now emerging for the region. Last week’s rains paused the barley and wheat harvests but offered beneficial moisture to summer crops, including maize. The current forecast favors the winter crop harvest but will start to stress maize, sunflowers, and other spring crops. The current two-week forecast offers above-average temperatures for most of Europe and the 2-5-day outlook remains dry for western Europe as well. Thereafter, showers are forecast to move into the region, which should...
What You Need to Know Today: Crude oil prices dropped sharply with traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. There were reports that Iran was behind an attack on a cargo ship near the coast of Oman, which would be a violation of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Pr...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
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.