General Comments In December the Fed's FOMC voted to buy $85 billion of Treasury notes and mortgage bonds each month for an indefinite period of time. This is another version of quantitative easing designed to keep interest rates very low. Effectively, the Fed would "print" $85 billion each month and feed it to the U.S. economy. Some pundits dubbed this program as QE-Eternity. The general assumption was that this program would last at least until the end of 2013 and perhaps beyond.However, the actual minutes of the December meeting tell a somewhat different story. Whereas the FOMC voted 11-1 in favor of the bond buying program, the minutes revealed that there was a considerable difference of opinion among members as to how long the progr...
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.