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: Crude oil prices dropped sharply with traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. There were reports that Iran was behind an attack on a cargo ship near the coast of Oman, which would be a violation of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Pr...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
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.