Australia is experiencing record fire danger and, at the time of writing this report, has over 100 wildfires. Firefighters have struggled to cope with dozens of fires that are continuing to burn out of control. The weather forecast offers little hope for improvement. Fire stories have dominated local news, with the prime minister and respective state premiers actively engaging the media. The fires have particularly affected the states of New South Wales, Victoria and the island state of Tasmania.Australia recently posted record high temperatures, exceeding the previous record for "average maximum temperatures" for six consecutive days. These record hot days in January follow dry conditions in November and December. Fires also have been assi...
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...
Unlike the 2022 fertilizer shock, today’s disruption is rooted less in rerouted trade flows and more in damaged production capacity, raw material constraints and uncertain recovery timelines. That makes this a longer-duration risk for U.S. agricultural producers and retailers who must sec...
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.