WTO Litigation Up: The number of dispute settlement cases filed at the WTO has skyrocketed, forcing the organization to reassign staff to deal with the workload. Dispute volume usually correlates to trade volumes, which means the latest litigiousness may reflect a new plateau for this process.Border Violations Up: U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that the number of violations and penalties were up in fiscal year 2012. However, the agency intercepted slightly fewer quarantine materials (i.e., plant material, animal products and byproducts, and soil), forwarded fewer pest interceptions to USDA and had a lower number of actionable pest interceptions than in 2011.No to TPP: Within hours of Japan's election results being announced ye...
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...
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...
Key Takeaways: India is excluding sugarcane juice, sugar syrup, and B-heavy molasses from its 2026/27 fuel ethanol procurement program to protect domestic sugar supplies, potentially shifting additional demand toward corn and rice. India’s corn consumption for ethanol has surged from jus...
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.