General Comments The December meeting of the Federal Reserve's FOMC was expected to be pro forma, but it developed into something more. The Fed redefined and expanded its bond buying program that is intended to keep interest rates at the current historically low levels. The Fed intends to buy $45 billion of long-term Treasury notes and $40 billion of mortgage bonds each month. That is a total of $85 billion that the Fed will print up and pump into the economy each month.Heretofore, the Fed promised to keep interest rates low indefinitely, perhaps through 2015, but it did not reveal what measures it would use to determine whether to stay that course or whether to change its policies. However, in an effort towards transparency, the Fed pub...
Yesterday, Alberta held a referendum on whether to begin the process toward independence from Canada. With more than one million votes counted as of early Tuesday morning, around 77 percent supported remaining in Canada, and 23 percent voted to start the process of separation, according to unof...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Pakistan’s smaller wheat farmers have been holding protests to complain about the lack of a support price for wheat and the potential expansion of GMO crop production. They also want the reinstatement of PASSCO, the governme...
What You Need to Know Today: Harvest pressure in the U.S. sent corn and soybeans lower as supplies increased and there were signs USDA’s upward revisions to yields in the October WASDE could be close to right. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated over the weekend, with Ukrai...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.