Corn Argentina’s corn harvest advanced 9.2 percent last week, bringing the total harvest to 82 percent of the planted area. The harvest is 12 percent behind last year’s pace, but yields are above trendline, so large volumes are being originated daily. Farmer selling has increased considerable in the past few weeks and exporters are buying an average of 0.5 MMT each week. Exporters secured 0.8 MMT in the week ending 14 July, however, and 1 MMT for the week ending 21 July. There are no official numbers yet, but WPI expects another week of above-average origination for the last week of July. Farmers are harvesting large volumes and they need to keep selling (they sold 70 percent of the expected volume). Prices are st...
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.