An anniversary of a dubious sort occurred last week. It was five years ago, on 15 September 2008, that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The collapse of the well-known, well-respected global financial services company sent shock waves rippling around the world. The company, founded in 1850, began as a marketer and trader of cotton. It branched into other areas, including financial services in the early 1900s, and evolved into a merchant bank. Its failure is the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Lehman's collapse is sometimes pointed to as the cause of the financial crisis of 2008/09 that led to the severe economic recession from which the world is still recovering. This is not true, of course. The fall of Lehman's did not cause the...
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.