For the past three years, strong market prices were needed to encourage sufficient crop production to meet growing demand. The next task for the market to address for 2015/16 will be just the opposite.In simple economic terms, the level of production of renewable agricultural crops responds to the degree of demand for those crops. Prices of renewable agricultural crops respond to the balances between supplies of those crops and demand. Thus, prices become the signals that tell crop producers and the entire marketing chain how well supplies and demand are balanced and what changes in either are needed.One could go back through history and find countless examples demonstrating the relationship between agricultural crop supplies, demand and pr...
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...
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.