Indonesia put the turd in the punch bowl this week and caused vegetable oil futures to rocket to record highs. Its export embargo of palm oil is temporary and reflects domestic politics and supply chain inflexibilities but, in conjunction with the war in Ukraine, it is having a huge adverse global impact. Trade Policy India and Argentina are two countries adept at using border measures to manipulate supply/demand situations and now India wants a long-term supply contract with Argentina and is urging Buenos Aires to end its 30 percent export duty on sunflower oil. In exchange, Delhi will give concessions on its import duty. Argentina is unlikely to concede to the proposal since the yield on its recent sunflower crop was 5 percent bel...
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.