The U.S. Grains Council just released its 2016/17 Corn Harvest Quality Report, and the analysis of the 2016 U.S. crop goes quite far toward explaining how it became so big and surprised such a large number of crop analysts.The 2016 U.S. corn crop was a record by every measure. USDA pegged the yield at an all-time high of 175.3 bushels/acre with total production at 15.226 billion bushels (386 MMT), which are simply incredible numbers. There were all sorts of discussions throughout the summer and into the actual harvest period regarding how the crop looked much better from the road than in the fields as well as about excessive ear tip-back, poor kernel set, shallow kernels, etc. The Pro Farmer tour highlighted many of those potential yield-ro...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...
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.