These are the kind of times that show why grain farming is such a risky business. After several years of grain and soy prices being pressured by very big crops and burdensome supplies both in the U.S. and globally, the 2019/20 crop cycle has seen farmers buffeted by the impact of excessive precipitation and flooding that delayed spring planting by two to four weeks in many cases. As an example of weather risk to an extreme, wet conditions resulted in a large amount of farmland that simply did not get planted. Grain and soy markets staged an impressive rally based on the big spring planting problems. Estimates are that U.S. farmers were unable to plant more than 19 million acres of cropland, an unprecedented amount. FSA data shows that 11.2...
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.