The Heritage plan would cut federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years and lead to a balanced budget by 2023. Given the source, surprisingly little of that rather large savings comes from agricultural policy.Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has released its federal budget proposal for FY 2017. It is entitled “Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for 2017.” The plan will be followed up with two more papers: one on a policy vision for presidential-congressional joint action and one on presidential/cabinet-level initiatives. The Heritage plan would cut federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years and lead to a balanced budget by 2023. Given the source, surprisingly little of that rather large savings comes from agri...
Key Takeaways: Sugarcane is the world’s largest crop by total production volume, surpassing major commodities such as corn, wheat, and soybeans, and supplies roughly 80 percent of global sugar production. Sugarcane’s perennial growth cycle allows farmers to harvest multiple crops f...
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement has reached a critical point after the Supreme Court ruled on 25 June that Bayer is shielded from state-level lawsuits because federal regulation does not require the company to warn of alleged cancer risks from such products. Thousands of "failure...
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.