The World Bank’s food security update notes that the agricultural price index rose one percent from August to September. Food inflation is high in low to middle income countries, with Zimbabwe and Lebanon standouts for having the highest inflation rates in both nominal and real terms (see graph below). The Bank estimates that over 205 million people worldwide are in crisis or worse. The largest increases for food insecurity are occurring in African countries. Notably, the share of rich countries with high food inflation has increased sharply. Hungary and Lithuania have both gone from around 4 percent nominal food inflation a year ago to the low 30 percentile. The UK has gone from 0.9 percent to 12.6 percent, and food price inflation...
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.