Senators Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) have been preparing an amendment to the Senate Ag Committee's farm bill that would cap the amount of premium subsidy a farmer could receive. As we previously reported (see WPI 14 May), budget-minded think tanks and taxpayer groups sent a letter to House members on Monday, recommending deeper cuts in the Senate Ag Committee's farm bill. While that letter hit House offices yesterday, a group of 12 commodity and farm organizations -- including corn, cotton, soybeans, wheat and the American Farm Bureau Federation -- sent a letter to House Ag Committee members in support of "maintaining a strong, efficient, effective, and affordable crop insurance program." According to the letter:...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Russian Grain Markets: 12–16 October 2026 During the week in review, the Russian grain market began recovering after an extended decline driven largely by Black Sea logistics bottlenecks, a good crop and weaker global demand in traditional Russian markets. Russia is beginning to harvest c...
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.