Free-market economist Milton Friedman might have believed that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but West Virginia is trying to be the first state in the nation to give free breakfast and lunch to all schoolchildren, kindergarten through 12th grade. The West Virginia Senate unanimously passed a bill on Friday that would create public-private partnerships to fund the meals. The plan is now headed to the state House of Representatives for consideration.This is not the first time the state's school lunch program has made the news. In 2008, West Virginia became the first state in the nation to implement the Institute of Medicine's guidelines for school lunches by adopting the Standards for School Nutrition. Despite the standards, in 2009...
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...
Developer's Note 24 August 2026: WPI recently completed an exercise that updated the codebase for this app and solved some of the discrepancies between our five-year average calculation and USDA's. There are a few lingering cases where early (late) starts (finishes) to the crop cycle resu...
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.