The skyrocketing cost of wheat has turned rice into the go-to food grain. It helps that global surplus rice stocks are at a record high. High wheat prices are deterring the use of the grain for both food and feed. ICE feed barley futures for the United Kingdom are now rivaling the price of milling wheat. Food use of barley would also be expected to benefit except global surplus stocks of this grain are at record lows. In fact, barley currently looks undervalued relative to wheat. In the major barley producing countries, three-quarters of the grain is used for animal feed. This is despite barley having some superior nutritional benefits over wheat, such as a larger amount of fiber and beta-glucan. But barley has always been viewed as...
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.