China continues to politically bludgeon Australia’s agriculture, the latest involving the suspension of beef imports from several processing plants Down Under. The pretense is COVID or antibiotic residues or no excuse at all. Meanwhile, China’s domestic demand for beef has been climbing steadily, rising at nearly 5 percent per year over the past decade. While pork production is recovering from the damage done by ASF, cattle are far more land intensive, a resource in short supply in China. Beef prices have been rising and are likely to continue doing so as a combination of limited global supplies, increased demand, and the influence of the cattle cycle create a perfect storm of demand exceeding supply. Beijing does not like reli...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
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.