Last Friday, we reported on the new Executive Order from the Administration on various competitive issues for agriculture and the meat sector. As we mentioned, USDA will issue a new rule on meat labeling with regard to what can be labelled as “Product of USA.” Secretary Vilsack added some clarity to that effort in his remarks at an event in Council Bluffs, Iowa. First, the issue. In June, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) filed a petition with the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) to change the current regulations that allow meat products to be labeled Production of the USA if the product included imported product which had been processed or packaged at an FSIS inspected facility. The U.S. Cattlemen&rsq...
What You Need to Know Today: Corn, wheat, and the soy complex all formed new contract or at least rally highs to close what has become one of the most uniformly bullish weeks in CBOT history. Escalations in the fighting between Russia and Ukraine and attacks on civilian merchant vessels show n...
The Federal Reserve Board holds an annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, each year about this time, and this year’s meeting is now. It’s always a “must-watch” event, but this year, amidst persistent inflation and with a new Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, it drew additiona...
You cannot escape the vortex of opinions about water scarcity in the Western United States, especially in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin. Agriculture is the villain in many of these editorials. Agriculture uses too much water, so it should use less, is the refrain. We all wish it was...
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.