Argentine Farmers Holding Back Soybean Sales Argentina's farmers have been very reluctant to sell their crop because of high export taxes and a very low official currency exchange rate, despite harvesting a large soybean crop this year. The current export tax rate for soybeans is 35 percent and the official exchange rate with the dollar is 5.45 pesos to the USD. This compares to the black market rate of between 8 and 9 pesos to the USD. That means farmers are receiving only about 42 percent of the pesos they would receive if there were no export tax and the black market, or blue dollar, rate was used. It is understandable that farmers are only selling the minimum amount of soybeans to pay their bills rather than selling for pesos that...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.