Ocean Freight Comments - 7 December 2023 By Jay O'Neil Commodity Consulting As the old saying goes, “what goes up, must come down.” Dry bulk markets were not kind to Capesize vessel owners this week as that sector witnessed an historic one-day decline on Thursday. Markets seem confu...
South Korea has had a problem. Its farmers insist on growing rice while its consumers are increasingly switching consumption to wheat-based products. For the second time in recent years the government has contrived a subsidy plan to reduce rice output in favor of wheat or soybeans. It provides...
Given current tight global rice stocks and high prices (see graph below), the question is how much wheat will be substituted for food or feed use. Rice prices have dropped since their peak early this year, but wheat is still 35 percent cheaper by weight than rice as a food grain. It is one reas...
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.