While much of the focus on Europe relates to political instability in the EU, and threats from Russia, there are ample economic issues that also need to be addressed. This is true in both industrial production and agricultural output. European farms continue to lag their American counterparts in total factor productivity due to less R&D spending, slower technology uptake, smaller farm sizes, and regulatory burdens. The latter, including the Green Deal and Farm to Fork prompted a political revolt by farmers that is still reverberating across the Continent. But European industrial production is similarly burdened. McKinsey studied EU investment and productivity and found large deficiencies. U.S. investment in intellectual property...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
Can we really expect a bushel of corn to carry an environmental passport throughout the entire food system? One that reliably documents its carbon footprint, biodiversity impacts, water use, soil carbon, and other environmental attributes all the way from the farm field to the consumer? This is...
Key Takeaways: Despite little progress in a U.S.-Iran framework for a peace deal or an agreement itself, vessel transits are picking up in the Strait of Hormuz (SOH). On Wednesday morning, Kpler reported 31 verified vessel transits of the SOH in a positive sign of increased activity in t...
Key Takeaways: An aging farmer population and fewer younger successors are creating growing farm succession challenges, leaving many operations without a clear future High land values and capital requirements create major barriers to farm ownership for new producers Farmland consolidation and...
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.