In response to the coronavirus, governments around the world increased trade barriers and made policy pledges for greater self-sufficiency. Typically, livestock products are the easiest to block since they are more biologically active, containing or attracting a broader number of organisms that compromise their importation upon inspection. Rabobank characterized animal protein trade in 2020 as full of uncertainties. There may have been uncertainties but there were also false impressions. While the expansion in beef and chicken trade slowed in 2020 from a year earlier, pork exports more than doubled thanks to China. Instead of shrinking, the overall increase in meat and poultry trade for 2020 exceeded the previous year’s rate of growth...
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.