The U.S. organic foods industry formally petitioned USDA this week to initiate a research and promotion program for organic, but its goals may be different than those of the checkoff programs initiated by producers of conventional agricultural commodities. Organic Government Speech The U.S. organic foods industry formally petitioned USDA this week to initiate a research and promotion program for organic. The industry had to petition USDA because under the law, "checkoff funds" assessed on farmers to pay for the effort are considered equivalent to taxes and thus a public good. In an earlier ruling on the beef checkoff program, the Supreme Court characterized it as "government speech," a distinction with importance noted below.While p...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.