World Perspectives

Divergence of Markets; Fear No Beer; Little Net Gain

Divergence of Markets Food away from home has been outpacing food at home as the cost of human services has written. The categories on the rise include meat, eggs, produce, and alcohol. Food prices are unlikely to descend and even food price discounter Walmart has struggled to restrain what they charge to their budget conscious costumers. Prices that have declined include bananas, salmon, pork chops and sweet potatoes. Nonetheless, one troubling result is that the number of Americans reporting that they lack sufficient food rose 25 percent in 2024. At the same time, more affluent shoppers are increasing their purchases of more expensive organic foods by 13.9 percent CAGR.  Through a combination of production hurdles and health concerns...

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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.

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