The sequester is mostly over. While it has been ordered, it has not yet been implemented; it will be carried out over the remainder of the fiscal year. Congress is now turning its attention to the continuing resolution (CR) needed to fund the government for the rest of FY 2013. The previous CR passed in 2012 expires on 27 March.The Republican-controlled House passed a bill on Wednesday that would keep funding in place for the next six weeks. The bill passed by a vote of 267-151, with 53 Democrats voting for and 14 Republicans voting against. Essentially, the bill would freeze existing appropriations and set a $984 billion limit for discretionary spending this year. Total federal spending is about $3.5 trillion, which includes mandatory spen...
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...
What You Need to Know Today: Harvest pressure in the U.S. sent corn and soybeans lower as supplies increased and there were signs USDA’s upward revisions to yields in the October WASDE could be close to right. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated over the weekend, with Ukrai...
Developer's Note 24 August 2026: WPI recently completed an exercise that updated the codebase for this app and solved some of the discrepancies between our five-year average calculation and USDA's. There are a few lingering cases where early (late) starts (finishes) to the crop cycle resu...
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.