Constituent Service? Credit John McCormick and Greg Giroux over at Bloomberg for revealing a delicious irony in the food stamp debate. They analyzed USDA data and concluded that among the 254 counties where food stamp use has doubled, Republican Mitt Romney won 84 percent of them in the last election. In fact, many of the rural counties where food stamp use has exploded are represented by Republicans in the House who are trying to whack the program by $40 billion. Studies have noted, however, that many voters choose candidates representing a vision on how they'd like the world to be rather than their own personal situation. Smoking Issue Under pressure to allow other countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to restrict tobacc...
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...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.