There are just 43 days left in 2020, and the grain and soy complex markets head toward year’s end with mixed messages. Based on recent price action following USDA’s November WASDE, the soy complex appears to be very bullish. The corn market is semi-bullish, but wheat futures struggle, not always successfully, to hang on to recent gains. This is an over-simplification, of course. There are quite a number of diverse threads of real and potential influences for markets to digest every trading day, and they do not always point in the same direction. As is so often the case for agricultural markets, weather is a key factor in current price action. This time weather is joined by Chinese activities, and either can drive daily price di...
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.