Regional News In its latest crop monitoring bulletin, the EU Commission’s MARS division noted few to no negative impacts on winter crops from the sudden shift to cold temperatures after a wet autumn. Crops were still vulnerable to frost after the warmer-than-normal fall conditions, but the cold snap has reportedly offered little impact. The major impacts, however, were from the wet sowing conditions for much of western Europe, including France, Germany, and the Benelux countries. French officials have noted that their expected soft wheat sowings will fall 10 percent shy of expectations due to the wet conditions. Heading into the new year, temperatures are expected to remain above-average for most of the continent with below-ave...
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.