World Perspectives
feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Where the Acres Went

Planted acres usually shift amongst crops but they do not typically go completely fallow, at least not to the scale in today’s USDA acreage report. Some shorts got caught with their pants down and took a beating today. The question is why farmers decided to let 6 million acres go idle compared to what they reported in March? There are several possible reasons but two are notable: 

On-farm stocks of wheat, corn and soybeans are higher (see graph below); and

Planting crops is not profitable for many farmers.

Chances are, it is more marginal land that is being idled and so the impact on overall production will be somewhat muted. Speculators can be mad at USDA but the agency had to weigh what farmers reported back i...

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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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