China to Boost Dairy Investment Overseas Yashili, one of China's top dairy producers, recently announced that it will invest $210 million in building a milk processing plant in New Zealand. The investment comes a month after China's Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial group flagged the plan to spend $214 million on buying and upgrading Oceania Dairy Group's South Canterbury milk powder plant. Just a few months ago in October 2012, Synutra International, China's third-largest infant formula producer, signed an investment deal worth $130 million with French dairy cooperative Sodiaal, the fourth-largest dairy group in Europe.Rising incomes and increasing health consciousness are increasing the demand for dairy. Driven by the tremendous demand, C...
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...
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.