Olive oil is a niche product, comprising just under one percent of total global vegetable oil production. It is also higher priced, and only becoming more so as production drops. Europe produces around 62 percent of global olive oil and supplies half the world trade. Production is primarily in Spain, plus Portugal and Greece. Drought in southern Europe has harmed production. Because it is a niche product and is expensive, it is mostly a first world problem. The U.S. alone imports 45 percent of globally traded olive oil outside of the EU. The brunt of the impact of reduced supply is more likely to impact importers in places like Brazil and Mexico. ...
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.