Consumers Missing in Tomato Spat: U.S. Commerce Undersecretary for International Trade Francisco Sanchez told reporters that the antidumping dispute on tomatoes was between growers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and not between the governments. On that basis, the party lacking participation in the dispute is the people destined to pay higher prices as a result of any negotiated settlement: consumers.Demandeurs Extraordinaire: A group of African countries are suggesting that the Doha agenda needs "symmetry" between its demands and offerings. They suggest that symmetry looks like the following: African countries get to impose special and differential treatment protection against imports, while rich countries provide "new and additi...
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.