During the late 1990’s and through the early 2000’s, Beijing consulted with a lot of western economists who guided the nation’s emergence as a global behemoth. However, now it is resorting to the economic alchemy that has been tried by and failed so many other governments. China’s problem of inflationary pressures and rising commodity costs are well known and researched problems. Every government is caught between farmers wanting higher prices but consumers demanding lower food costs. Beijing is attempting several flawed approaches to the problems. There is the basic jawboning effort, warning against speculation in the market while talking up farmers about the state’s need for them to plant more corn (prices a...
Key Takeaways: The U.S.-China agreement lowers tariffs on several U.S. agricultural products, but the lack of additional soybean commitments or greater certainty surrounding China’s existing 25 MMT purchase pledge made the deal a slight disappointment. Lower tariffs on U.S. corn are unli...
Key Takeaways: China has made significant progress toward corn self-sufficiency, with production projected to reach a record 307.0 MMT in 2026/27 while imports have fallen sharply from their 29.5 MMT peak in 2020/21. Strengthening food security has become an important priority for China, with...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.