Trade WarDonald Trump hasn’t even been sworn into office and is already roiling currency markets. The yuan, Mexican peso and Canadian dollar all slid this week on Trump’s social media claim that he will add tariffs on these three countries unless they stem the flow of drugs and illegal aliens into the U.S. The yuan fell against the dollar to its lowest level in four months. While Ottawa and Mexico City threatened retaliation, Beijing reacted more calmly by stating that neither country would win a trade war. China’s Embassy spokesman in Washington Liu Pengyu said, "About the issue of US tariffs on China, China believes that China-US economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature." The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship...
A bipartisan group of 26 lawmakers, led by Representative David Valadao (R-CA), sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and House Agriculture Committee Chair GT Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) requesting that $5 billion of the temporary economic assistance for farmers go toward spec...
Key Takeaways: Soyoil consumption as a biofuel feedstock climbed to a record 1.434 billion pounds in May, setting a new all-time monthly high. Improved 45Z policy clarity in February 2026 has supported stronger soyoil demand from the biofuel sector by providing producers with greater certainty...
Agriculture generates a lot of numbers in addition to crops and livestock. As ag economists, we are continually reviewing crop production, commodity prices, farm incomes, and international trade. You don’t often see much about capital investment in the ag press, however. New mills and gra...
Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, published in 1770, is of a timeless quality. It is a 425-line lament for a disappearing rural world, where prosperous villages give way to larger estates, fewer farmers, and emigration. One passage even follows those leaving for the new colony of Georgia...
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.