Agriculture played only a minor role in President Trump’s State of the Union speech last night. He cited the ongoing negotiations with China as an example of his aggressive trade policies but did not mention its recent soybean purchases. He also asked Congress to approve the USMCA trade agreement, which is intended to replace NAFTA. As every president does, he called for bipartisan cooperation and pointed to the recently-passed farm bill as an example of what can be done when the two parties work together. As for the grain and soy futures markets, they remained in a semi-paralyzed state awaiting Friday’s deluge of reports from USDA. As has been the case this week, overnight trading featured low volume and minimal price changes...
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.