It’s a critical week on Capitol Hill, both for the Biden Administration’s agenda and more generally, breaking the legislative log jam. First, the House Democratic leadership will attempt to bring the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill to the House floor for a vote. This package, which already passed the Senate, has been held up over the larger Biden American Families Plan – also referred to as the social infrastructure bill or the budget reconciliation bill, scored at a cost of $3.5 trillion. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) promised a vote on or before 31 October. Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus say they will vote against the infrastructure bill if it comes up in the House before...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...