There is a shortage of respirators and masks, but not food. The actual exporting of food has slowed in some cases due to restrictions on labor, but Bloomberg’s Isis Almeida and Agnieszka de Sousa assembled the following list of food export bans: • Kazakhstan has banned exports of wheat flour, carrots, sugar and potatoes. • Vietnam has stopped rice exports. • Serbia won’t export its sunflower oil and other goods. • Russia has suspended exports of certain grains such as buckwheat and rice. Global wheat, rice and chicken ending stocks are at their highest level in three years. There are more surplus soybeans and pork overhanging the market than two years ago. Coarse grains are down but remain well above req...
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.