Indeed, it is hundreds of U.S. domestic programs that fail the government's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), but continue to be funded.Experts gathered by the Obama administration under a Global Development Council met last week to opine on ways to improve overseas development assistance. The council released a series of recommendations under the rubric, "Global Development – Moving Beyond Business as Usual." In fact, development assistance has not been static. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was created under President Bush in 2004, and President Obama more recently initiated the Feed the Future effort. The MCC seeks to reward countries that improve public policy and reduce corruption, while Feed the Future better ties nee...
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...
Unlike the 2022 fertilizer shock, today’s disruption is rooted less in rerouted trade flows and more in damaged production capacity, raw material constraints and uncertain recovery timelines. That makes this a longer-duration risk for U.S. agricultural producers and retailers who must sec...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.