The success of a newly created farmer-based political party in the Netherlands in last week’s elections will establish the party as one of the largest in the Dutch Senate and could impact the government’s proposed nitrogen emissions reduction plans. Here’s a rough timeline of how and what happened. In 2019, the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) or Farmer-Citizen Movement was founded by ag journalist Caroline van der Plas. The BBB was born out of farmer protests that year against the Dutch government’s plans to comply with EU environmental policy restricting nitrogen emissions. In the 2021 general election, Ms. van der Plas won a seat in the Dutch House; she was and is the only elected BBB party member, and her seat is one o...
A federal appeals court paused a USITC ruling against President Trump’s use of Section 122 to impose 10-percent global tariffs. A bipartisan group of 80 House members asked USTR to investigate specialty crop imports from Mexico for unfair trade practices. India notified the WT...
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.