Rollins versus Kennedy With a vote of 72 – 28, Brooke Rollins became the 33rd U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and she achieved the fifth best Senate approval of Trump Cabinet members thus far. By contrast, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. received 20 fewer approval votes, and 20 more disapproval votes than she did in his bid to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has said that he wants to end chemical agriculture and replace HFCS with cane sugar, among other oddball ideas. According to a Farm Journal survey, 90 percent of farmers believe RFK, Jr. is negative for U.S. agriculture. Some in U.S. agriculture believe the sector has been too quiet in the face of RFK, Jr.’s ideas. Now that he is in power and should he p...
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
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.