Public Health COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Decline, Fears of New Variants Wane One particular positive as China’s lengthy New Year’s and Lantern Festival celebrations concluded is the sharp decrease in coronavirus related deaths. After seeing an official daily record of nearly 60,000 illness related fatalities on 15 January, the numbers have declined to just under 3,300 for the past week, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and the World Health Organization (WHO). That pushed up China’s official total to nearly 101,000. While many in the public health community would argue this figure represents a fraction of the true number, it still points to the country’s vulnerability and the chaos that resulted...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
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.