Agriculture Losing the War Modern agricultural practices will never obtain approval from their philosophical antagonists; the goal is to explain agriculture's scientific and economic rationale to elite opinion leaders who are more committed to facts. Unfortunately, the editorial by the Los Angeles Times against Prop 37 requiring labeling of biotech foods is damning of the entire agrifood system, and hardly helpful to biotech. The paper's problem appears to be that Prop 37 would only inform consumers about biotech while ignoring all of the other evils of the system, like pesticides, antibiotics and animal crowding.It says the U.S. "rushed headlong into producing them [biotech crops] with lax federal oversight." Its minor concession is tha...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.