Hazardous Farm Bill Environment: With every government program taking a sequester cut, including White House tours, lost is the broad coalition of the equally funded. Instead, there are sharks circling the waters of Washington, hoping someone else's targeted reduction will free up some of their own chum. Farm groups are rewriting their farm bill policy demands of last year to make them more defensible in this year's environment. Competitors such as sugar producers (limit imports, guaranteed minimum price) and sugar users (wanting the lower world price for the ingredient) are now back in a scrum on Capitol Hill after having put their fight on hiatus during the past several farm bills. In short, maneuvering a farm bill through the Congress...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
Markets are getting into the Halloween spirit, handing out more tricks than treats. There has been some encouraging news, but it hasn’t been enough to slow the broader slide. Now buyers need to show up with something other than another “Charlie Brown” rock for the bag. Somethi...
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.