Speaking at the World Dairy Summit, USDA Secretary Vilsack repeated his concern about the declining number of farms and farmers in America, and in a related dynamic the increasing concentration of income among larger farmers. As previously noted, a economic argument can be made for economic scale for any industry. No one says Ford, GM, and Stellantis are too big. The Secretary provides no basis for why he thinks there should be lots of smaller farms instead. One argument he made at the Summit does have validity, and that is that farm policy should be written to prepare farms and farmers for the future. Farm bills are not written to be forward looking but rather to preserve the status quo of exiting stakeholders. The Secretary emphasi...
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...
Key Takeaways: The Middle East and North Africa's arid climate and limited water resources have created a structural dependence on imported wheat. Government wheat tenders in major importing countries serve as important benchmarks for global trade, providing insight into exporter competitivene...
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.