Shorting the Market The Thai Ministry of Commerce is reportedly assembling its ASEAN counterparts to negotiate the creation of a trading cartel in rice. Apparently the government's rice mortgage scheme has worked as planned and spiked the price of rice, but that has caused exports to plunge as neighboring rice producers happily take advantage of Thailand's sudden uncompetitiveness. Bangkok's answer is for everyone to collectively stiff the consumer, which would likely bring benefit to rice producers not part of the cartel. It is all an old and familiar dance to try and undermine the market. RINs When the petroleum refining industry bought fraudulent Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) from biodiesel suppliers registered under the E...
Key Takeaways: Drought remains a major threat to global agricultural production, particularly in regions with limited rainfall and growing water scarcity. Commercially available drought-tolerant traits in corn, soybeans, and wheat have generally delivered modest yield improvements, limiting th...
Key Takeaways: Peace at last in the Persian Gulf? Over the weekend, the U.S. announced and Iranian officials confirmed a peace agreement, with formal ratification set for Geneva on 19 June. The announcement means the Strait of Hormuz is set to reopen fully and toll-free within 30 days.&n...
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.