Congress is back in session this week and the White House is reaching out to Democratic lawmakers to scale back the Biden $3.4 trillion “Build Back Better” plan. Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) are still holding firm in opposition on both the overall size of the package and certain provisions. Yesterday afternoon, Manchin met for two hours with Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), the chair of the House progressive caucus, to discuss options for a possible path forward. The discussions are focused on how to reduce the price tag to somewhere between $1.9 and $2.3 trillion. Those cuts could threaten some part of the agriculture portion of the package – specif...
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...
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.