World Perspectives

Oil Slicks and Good Deals

Crop Insurance Challenge: Any angst over a U.S. Senate vote to reduce crop insurance benefits to the top 1 percent richest farmers seems overdone. Amendment cosponsor Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) was correct in asserting that a 47 percent premium subsidy is still very good when you have a large farming operation. More impactful and less likely to pass when the Senate comes back into session on 3 June is a $50,000 cap on crop insurance benefits. In short, this farm bill is likely to pass the Senate with very few substantive changes.Olive Oil Slick: Europeans are finally showing they've had enough of top-down regulation. The EU Commission was forced to reverse a rule that would have required restaurants to serve olive oil in non-refillable bottl...

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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.

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