The New Delhi playbook for staple crops is to offer farmers a generous Minimum Support Price (MSP), donate the extra output to the nation’s poor, and then dump on the world market any surpluses that would otherwise depress domestic prices. India’s rice surplus was around a quarter of production a dozen years ago but exports have been expanding at double digits a year while output has grown just 2.7 percent per year. The result in this El Nino impacted crop year is that carryover will represent just 12 percent of production this year. That is too close for comfort and so India has slowed the rice export juggernaut and banned the export of non-Basmati rice and other crops. The pace of rice production could resume its ascent...
With considerable fanfare—and few specifics—USDA last week announced its Great American Cotton Plan for 2026-2031. Secretary Brooke Rollins and industry leaders described the initiative as a comprehensive strategy to address the persistent challenges facing U.S. cotton production, d...
From WPI Consulting
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.