Money Games SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is a familiar face to the agriculture community, having chaired the CFTC during the Obama Administration. He is reportedly investigating the practice of payment for order flow in the securities industry. Basically, brokers claim to be commission-free but then receive rebates on trades routed through specific clearing firms. If Gensler were as familiar with agriculture as the sector is with him, he might also look into similar backdoor practices impacting the trade in food. For example, retailers charge a slotting fee, whereby products are placed on shelves at eye-level or down at the feet of customers based on how much money the distributor/foodmaker pays upfront. Or a little more tawdry is the shelter...
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...
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.