Monday’s CBOT trade was essentially dedicated to the Grain Stocks report with pre-report trading seeing muted action and steady volumes while post-report trade saw a meaningful rally in corn and a pullback in soybeans. The report issued a surprisingly small corn stocks figure, which spurred the market higher, but the wheat and soybeans data were relatively neutral. Markets were also in a more bullish mood after Hurricane Helene brought strong winds, heavy rains, and massive flooding to areas around the Ohio River that will likely pare back yields from the region. The rains will stall harvest in areas that were not flooded out, though the storm did much to help refill water levels in the Mississippi River system. The big news for the...
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.