It has been a year since the EU released its plan for halving the use of pesticide and slashing fertilizer use and the debate over it is evolving. The farming lobby has stiffened its spine with the Dutch government backing away from some of its strident demands, and now agriculture members of the European Parliament are calling for cattle to be excluded from the emissions cutting plan. Environmentalists dislike how the war in Ukraine has elevated the concern about food security, which was front and center this week when G-7 agriculture ministers. That group included EU heavy weights Germany, France, and Italy. And while they called for expanding food security in a “sustainable” manner, it calls to question the use of arbi...
Key Takeaways: USDA data access is equal; the ability to use it is not. Larger operations can afford experts who turn public reports into business decisions. Analytical capacity is the true advantage. Forecasts matter only when converted into profit, purchasing, and risk-management decisions...
The Senate will reconvene today after a late August recess and will adjourn in early October, in about 3 to 4 weeks. The farm bill will move front and center on the agenda. A major fly-in is scheduled for today and Tuesday, with the goal of hitting all Senate offices. Groups participating in th...
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.