Due to the government shutdown, benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have lapsed, affecting nearly 42 million people nationwide. The shutdown also threatens benefits for nearly 7 million participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). This is the first lapse of the program in its 60-year history. So far, neither Congress nor the USDA has acted to fund the program. However, a coalition of 25 states and the District of Columbia has sued USDA in federal court in Boston over its decision to not use $6 billion in contingency funds to pay for SNAP. A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled Friday that USDA must use a contingency fund to at least cover a port...
What You Need to Know Today: The G7 agreed to release 100 million barrels of crude oil and fuel reserves over four months, with a substantial diesel release front-loaded into the first 20 days. The announcement initially pushed crude oil lower on Friday, although it later recovered a portion o...
In a recent social media post, R-CALF unveiled its latest cattle market plan: “contracts that bind producers before establishing a base price, then tie that price to future negotiated cash transactions, should be prohibited.” That proposal aligns with recent legislation by Represent...
Key Takeaways: The recent pearl-clutching from parts of the beef industry regarding the loss of the daily Kansas fed cattle negotiated trade pricing report is overwrought and ignores the fact that the direction was readily apparent. The shift away from negotiated trade has been well docu...
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.