Tariffs are down for many countries other than China, but they have not gone away. Yesterday’s market exuberance over the temporary pause was just a sugar high and reality returned on Thursday. The better-than-expected decline in inflation (CPI) in March wasn’t enough for outside markets and traders paired back bets. Unlike tariffs or CPI, the April WASDE report was not expected to move markets. It certainly did not move them in any unexpected way since the report itself was within the market’s expected range. USDA had not changed the U.S. corn ending stocks number since January. It needed to increase the export number, which should trail back into ending stocks, and it did both. Following are some notable take...
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.