As Gary Blumenthal reported yesterday, the Senate Agriculture Committee held a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Brooke Rollins to be Secretary of USDA. As Gary noted, she “rolled” through the hearings “poised, confident, charming” and had done the groundwork as she pointed out in her opening statement noting that she had already met with every member of the Committee. The following is more about what she said, where she’s coming from, and where she expects to guide USDA. Rollins gave an opening statement about her background, her perspective on agriculture, and her previous roles. Those included being a policy staffer in the office of former Texas Governor Rick Perry, serving at the Texas P...
What You Need to Know Today: Corn and soybeans were under heavy selling pressure as weaker (or at least as-expected) export demand runs into an accelerating harvest pace with more grain available in the spot market. Corn and soybean harvest progress remains below average across the U.S., espec...
Key Takeaways: Brazil confirmed a Newcastle disease outbreak at a commercial turkey farm in Santa Catarina on 18 October, raising concerns about potential disruptions to poultry exports despite the outbreak being confined to a single facility thus far. Mexico and Malaysia have imposed nationwi...
Yesterday, Alberta held a referendum on whether to begin the process toward independence from Canada. With more than one million votes counted as of early Tuesday morning, around 77 percent supported remaining in Canada, and 23 percent voted to start the process of separation, according to unof...
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.