The House of Representatives passed the veterans and military construction appropriations bill yesterday (on a party line vote) but couldn’t move forward on a rule to bring the ag appropriations to the floor for consideration. This bill – which also funds FDA and is tied up in the abortion debate – has become controversial over the level of spending cuts (see WPI coverage from Monday) and provisions to reform SNAP. Failing to get the bill to the floor, the House adjourned for a six week August recess. On Monday we reported that Congress would get back on 4 September; that schedule is now actually 12 September, which means when they get back, there will be 12 days to pass the ag appropriations bill, and 10 othe...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
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.