According to the GAO, reducing premium subsidies for revenue policies could potentially result in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual budgetary savings with limited costs to individual farmers.The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report yesterday on crop insurance entitled "Considerations in Reducing Federal Premium Subsidies." Indeed, the recent commodity price boom had a number of impacts on farm policy. The first was a wholesale abandonment of direct payments in lieu of a greater reliance on crop insurance, which the 2014 Farm Bill expanded in a number of areas. Peanuts were added as eligible under revenue coverage as were "enterprise units" (i.e., all insurable acreage of the same insured crop in the county in whi...
With considerable fanfare—and few specifics—USDA last week announced its Great American Cotton Plan for 2026-2031. Secretary Brooke Rollins and industry leaders described the initiative as a comprehensive strategy to address the persistent challenges facing U.S. cotton production, d...
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.