Wheat GM Wheat Saga Continues Argentina’s lone GM wheat variety (HB4 wheat from Bioceres) continues to generate polemic from various outside interests. The Brazilian Wheat Industry Association said last week that if the Brazilian government approves Argentina’s GM variety for import, they will stop buying wheat from Argentina. Brazilian millers are opposed to processing GM wheat as no one knows what the consumer reaction will be. Despite the fact Brazilian millers like the quality of Argentine wheat and are used to working with it, which accounts for 80 percent of Brazil’s annual wheat imports, they claim to have other origins on standby to supply their needs. Such a dispute could be damaging to both Brazil and Ar...
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.