World Perspectives

Tilting at Windmills; Floored Prices; Greenwashing Sustainability

Tilting at Windmills China is being chided in the financial press for trying to limit commodity prices. In addition to scrutinizing pricing platforms, Beijing is auctioning stockpiles and warning against speculation. This approach ignores the real impacts of underlying demand, which the government itself is guilty of stoking. However, the more award aspect for China is that markets depend on accurate information, which is too often characterized as a state secret. Even China’s soybean import data, which can be verified via suppliers’ export data and shipping logs, runs behind reflecting actual purchases. Supply/demand imbalances are solved with transparency, not with browbeating market participants. Floored Prices We noted th...

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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.

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