Russian Grain Markets: 28 April – 2 May 2025 Russian audit, corporate finance, and consultancy company BEFL published a rating of Russia’s largest megafarms which included 75 companies – half the number registered a year ago. This is telling us that large farms are becoming even larger. There were some major M&A in the sector including taking foreign assets and redirecting them into Russian hands or nationalizing those. The total area these megafarms are farming covers 19 Mha which is 500,000 ha up from last year. The top 10 farms cover 7.7 Mha which is 41 percent of the overall megafarms area. The previous report was showing that top ten was farming 7 Mha. For reference, 2024 was the year of the largest M&A...
What You Need to Know Today: Crude oil prices dropped sharply with traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. There were reports that Iran was behind an attack on a cargo ship near the coast of Oman, which would be a violation of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Pr...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
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.