Dry bulk freight rates cratered this week as China started its Golden Week holiday, which blanketed markets with calm and quiet. Pacific markets were especially dull and weaker, especially amid doubts about how China’s grain demand will play out after the holiday. China still has not book...
After yesterday’s charge forward in soybeans and a lower close in the overnight, optimists on a trade deal with China again took over and brought another higher close that this time infected both the corn and wheat markets. As stated in Matt’s adjacent analysis, this seems overwroug...
The federal government has been shut down since midnight on Wednesday and various USDA reports have been suspended. This includes some of the data typically reported in the Thursday livestock report, including slaughter data and livestock and poultry inventories. USDA posted o...
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.