On Friday, Moody’s downgraded the U.S, credit worthiness and warned about rising levels of government debt and a widening budget deficit, cutting its U.S, credit rating by one notch to AA1. Moody’s was the last of the Big Three agencies to downgrade the U.S. from a triple-A rating.&...
Corn Farmers remain focused on the soybean harvest at the expense of executing fieldwork for corn. With favorable weather over the past few days, 20 percent of the soybean area has been harvested. As a result, corn harvest progress was limited, with only a 2.4 percentage point weekl...
Regional News The weather for the UK and northern Europe remains a major concern for crops. The UK is currently experiencing its driest year of the 21st century while western and northern Europe are slated for more dry conditions over the next two weeks. The EU model now favors more rain...
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.