The spring wheat harvest is quickly winding down, and a large farmer from eastern Montana recently sent some comments about his crop and what he (and his neighbors) are thinking these days.The spring wheat harvest is quickly winding down. Last Monday’s weekly crop progress report showed it was 40 percent complete compared with the five-year average for this date of 35 percent. Montana was 39 percent finished with North Dakota and South Dakota at 36 percent and 37 percent, respectively. Wet weather this past week hampered the harvest in central and eastern North Dakota as well as western Minnesota.Following are some general observations regarding the hard red spring wheat crop that are based on farmer reports as well as actual grain inspecti...
What You Need to Know Today: Harvest pressure in the U.S. sent corn and soybeans lower as supplies increased and there were signs USDA’s upward revisions to yields in the October WASDE could be close to right. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated over the weekend, with Ukrai...
Developer's Note 24 August 2026: WPI recently completed an exercise that updated the codebase for this app and solved some of the discrepancies between our five-year average calculation and USDA's. There are a few lingering cases where early (late) starts (finishes) to the crop cycle resu...
Argentina Sunflower Sunflower remains one of the most attractive crops in Argentina, supported by strong demand and favorable prices that currently offer some of the best projected production margins among summer crops. Planted area is estimated at 3.0-3.1 Mha, with around 42 percent already se...
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.