Ten Years of GM Cotton in India: Good or Bad? Ten years ago today, GM cotton was introduced in India. Some would say that this event changed the world cotton market, making India the world's second-largest exporter of cotton, bringing huge revenues to India's farmers, and reducing the use of pesticides on farmers' fields. On the other hand, some believe that the new technology is all hype; GM cotton worked for a few years until pests developed a resistance to the pesticides.While some attribute the production increase to new, fresh lands coming under production, overall productivity on old lands has declined. Experts have not yet identified the reasons why productivity has declined in some areas. Farmers believe that using Bt cotton over...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Russian Grain Markets: 12–16 October 2026 During the week in review, the Russian grain market began recovering after an extended decline driven largely by Black Sea logistics bottlenecks, a good crop and weaker global demand in traditional Russian markets. Russia is beginning to harvest c...
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.