Macro Trends Food Inflation Reaches Highest Level in Seven and a Half Years The effects of the August 2018 outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) have continued to reverberate across China’s economy in 2019. In the second quarter of this year, food inflation has hit levels not seen since 2012. This spring’s run-up in the cost of food began when those prices climbed 4.1 percent in March versus March 2018, which occurred as live hog prices recovered following the Lunar New Year celebration in February. In April, food prices shot up 6.1 percent on an annualized basis, marking the largest monthly increase since April 2016. Then came an 18.2 percent surge in the cost of pork in May along with price increases of 26.7 percent for fres...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
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.