Rough Night in Jericho is the name of an old western movie. As the title implies, things didn’t go as expected, and so it was with the wheat market this week.Rough Night in Jericho is the name of an old western movie. As the title implies, things didn’t go as expected, and so it was with the wheat market this week. A major winter storm dropped 10-20 inches of snow across a significant area of western Kansas, flattening crops that were already heading or headed. In addition to the crop-smashing snow, temperatures were very cold for many hours before it arrived. There were all kinds of comments and pictures discussing the Kansas wheat disaster. Estimates of crop loss ranged as high as 100-150 million bushels with one outlier suggesting it was...
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...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Bangladesh has asked the USA for technical assistance to improve grain storage and strengthen quality testing of imported grains. Of major importance to Bangladesh is the “technology to improve grain preservation and grain s...
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.