Greed and Climate Change: Greed will cause UN climate change negotiations to end this weekend in Doha, Qatar without agreement. The negotiations were made possible following an agreement last year that committed all nations to make reductions in emissions. However, developing countries are making several demands -- including that their development needs obviate the ability to make commitments equivalent to the rich countries -- and they want rich countries to increase by 30 percent the amount of subsidies they are paying to help developing countries adapt to climate change. American negotiators are pointing toward the U.S. fiscal cliff and saying "no way." Meanwhile, India is refusing to reduce the methane and other emissions caused by it...
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...
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.