Foreign Relations Cuban Relations: The Castro brothers have blamed the American trade embargo for Cuba's 50-year subpar economy. Many American policymakers note that the embargo has failed to pressure the island's leadership so it is time to end the embargo and try something else. Major economists responding to a Chicago Booth School of Business survey overwhelmingly say it is Cuba's own economic policies and not the U.S. embargo that has held the island's GDP growth at just 1.2 percent on average.Putin Relations: Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be attending the G-8 summit this weekend at Camp David, instead sending Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is more welcomed by the West. And now the White House says that President Oba...
What You Need to Know Today: Declining crop conditions ratings and shaky results from the Pro Farmer crop tour sent grains sharply higher on Tuesday. The Pro Farmer tour in Ohio pegged the state yield at 180.18 BPA, about 5.5 BPA below the tour’s 2025 estimate. Similarly, the Pro Farmer...
Based on a Depression-era statute, President Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion of exports to the U.S., or about 5.2 percent of the $383 billion worth of goods the U.S. imported from Canada in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Of that total, about $39.3 billion was agricu...
Key Takeaways: Brazil’s growing role in global agriculture is accompanied by a major vulnerability: the country imports approximately 88 percent of its fertilizer needs. High natural gas costs and development challenges have limited domestic nitrogen and potash production despite Brazil&...
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.