Corn The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange lowered its forecast of Argentina’s corn harvest estimate by 2.5 MMT down to 54 MMT last week. The main reasons are the February heatwave (which affected the mid- and late-season corn), excessive rainfall, and inclement weather that caused yield losses, plant overturns, etc. The unusually high incidence and severity of Spiroplasma bacteria was also noted as a reason for the reduced output. Many farmers are noticing that the incidence of Spiroplasma and its effects are larger than expected. Many plants appear be to healthy or nearly healthy at first glance, but the cobs are later found to be affected. Rain continues to fall steadily across Argentina, resulting in significant water accumulat...
What You Need to Know Today: The U.S. and Iran exchanged strikes, with the U.S. hitting Iranian bridges, energy sites, and military infrastructure. Iran launched a missile into Kuwait that damaged a desalination plant. Crude oil futures surged on heightened Middle East tensions, providing supp...
Key Takeaways: The EU heatwaves have coincided with key maize crop reproductive timing and featured high nighttime temperatures, a cruel two-sided blow to maize yields. France, much of western Europe, and Hungary have suffered the worst of the heat, with yield potential collapsing. WPI&r...
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.