Both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are taking the next step in the farm bill process when they markup farm bills next week. But then again, the Committees marked up farm bills last year. There are other signs, however, that point to this time around being the real deal. First, House Majority Leader Representative Eric Cantor (R-Virginia), who kept the farm bill from coming to the House floor in 2012, has now said that the House will take up the farm bill this summer. Second, a deal has been struck to tie conservation compliance to crop insurance. That is sign of political momentum for the farm bill. Consider the table below.The compromise is a political detente. Each of the 32 groups that signed yesterday's letter has committe...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.