In recent years, a number of agricultural futurists have expressed concern about the ability of the world to increase the food supply enough to feed the world’s population in 2050. The world population currently is about 7.3 billion people, and although the rate at which population is growing is slowing, it is expected to reach close to 10 billion people by mid-century. Much of the growth will be in Africa followed by Asia. In 1798 as world population neared 1 billion people, Thomas Malthus, an English scholar famously wrote that “the power of population is infinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” The so-called Malthusian Theory that population growth would eventually exceed th...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.