Drought Doesn’t Discriminate Despite the frequent battle with drought faced by its farmers, South Africa has rejected adoption of a drought-tolerant maize claiming it is no better than conventional seed. However, there are several pertinent factors that require attention in any such analysis, including the fact that yield is only one attribute differentiating biotech crops. The vast majority of the world’s farmland does not involve biotech crops. Most biotech crops are corn and soybeans grown predominantly in the USA, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. There are many factors besides genetics that affect yield, including soil types, nutrients, seeding practices, endemic threats and plant protection, plus weather. The countries...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.