Sustainability Cliff Charlie Mitchell of the New Republic complains that U.S. agriculture’s viewpoint of how to meet sustainability goals is to not change a thing. That is perhaps because the first hurdle of sustainability is profitability. The industry paid close attention to the USDA/ERS analysis of Europe’s Farm to Fork/Green Deal strategy and saw its potential 12 percent cut in production and an eye-dropping 16 percent drop in farm income. Canada’s Natural Climate Solution effort involves farmers talking to scientists and a modest C$185 million fund. Unresolved is the global conflict over concurrently achieving climate protection and food security. Same Old Policy Trade policy is something that hasn’t ch...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.