In its letter to President Obama, the U.S. Biotech Crop Alliance cited serious challenges to trade because of an unpredictable framework for approvals of new biotechnology products.President Obama is scheduled to attend the 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China during November. There will be a number of military and foreign policy issues on the bilateral agenda between the U.S. and China and perhaps one ag issue: market access to China. A group of 13 agricultural organizations, calling itself the U.S. Biotech Crop Alliance, has sent a letter to President Obama urging him to make "market access for U.S. crops a top priority" among the "number of high level issues to address with the Chinese." The goal, according to th...
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.