Prices for the 2014 Russian grain harvest are expected to be influenced equally by both political and climate-related factors. Due to the pending holidays, Ukrainian market price information was not available for this report. Russian Grain Markets Planting Update Russian farmers have planted spring grain crops on 6.2 million hectares (19.4 percent of the target) as of 28 April 2014. Included were 630,900 hectares of spring wheat (4.8 percent), 3.4 million hectares of spring barley (38.5 percent) and 948,000 hectares of spring corn (17.8 percent).Sunflower seed was planted on 1.4 million hectares (20.3 percent), spring rapeseed on 165,900 hectares (15.2 percent) and soybeans on 146,800 hectares (8.7 percent). Market Trends: 21-25 April 2...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.