China's Urbanization Faces Food Challenges Officials from the Leading Group on Rural Work under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China recently commented that the country's consecutive harvests over the past nine years are still insufficient to meet the growing demand for grain. This is the first instance of Chinese government officials showing public concern on the matter.Over the past 20 years, China experienced an ever-accelerating process of urbanization. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's urban population reached 690 million in 2011, which is up from 170 million in 1978. The percentage of the urban population increased from 17.9 percent in 1978 to 51.3 percent in 2011, while the rural population p...
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.