The U.S. government will be closed 5 December to honor the late George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States. Release of the government’ s various reports for the remainder of the week will be delayed by one business day as a result. Whatever excitement was created by last weekend’s trade truce with China has pretty well dissipated. This occurred as the realization grows that the agreement may have little or no impact on U.S. soy or grain exports and thus provides nothing to prop up futures market prices. Contradictions among U.S. officials and the vagueness of comments from Chinese government officials have helped to cool off markets. Moreover, trading at the opening Monday night left large gaps in soybeans, corn...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump suspended the planned attacks on Iran and announced that the pieces for a framework for peace were in place in a weekend social media post. Iran, however, later said no efforts were underway to conduct negotiations with the U.S., though Oman indicat...
Key Takeaways: E15 expansion would support corn and ethanol demand by increasing domestic biofuel consumption and reducing reliance on petroleum-based fuels. Year-round E15 has gained bipartisan momentum, but the policy remains in legislative limbo as lawmakers continue to negotiate provisions...
From WPI Consulting
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.