News Updates MEDITERRANEAN AND MIDDLE EAST COMMENTS A Lebanese company announced that it will invest up to $800 million in agricultural projects in Sudan to produce animal feed for export to Saudi Arabia. The company, GLB Invest, says that it has 87,000 acres of land and will produce 750,000 MT of feed by 2019. According to the company, $200 million already have been invested, and feed production of 40,000 MT will be seen in 2014, followed by steady year-on-year increases to the 750,000 MT target level.A Saudi company has decided to delay its investment in Sudanese agriculture because of the difficulty with repatriating profits from the country. Due to the severe foreign currency shortages in Sudan, the transfer of funds out of the countr...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...