World Perspectives
livestock

Farm Bill Re-Scored

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack today testified on the state of the rural economy before the House Agriculture Committee. Much of the testimony was on emergency and relief actions provided by USDA during the historic drought of 2012; however, Vilsack did also press for a comprehensive farm bill -- which he called a food, farms and jobs bill -- to be passed this year.Of course, the job of producing a farm bill became more difficult since the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on 1 March released an updated cost estimate of the Senate-passed and House Agriculture Committee farm bills. According to a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbi Stabenow (D-Michigan), the "reduction to (baseline spending) would be significantly smaller tha...

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HPAI Waning This Spring

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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.

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