Stiffing the Customer: If U.S. antitrust laws applied to government officials, Commerce Under Secretary for International Trade Francisco Sanchez would be in trouble right now. He just negotiated an agreement with Mexico that will ensure American consumers pay double- and triple-digit increases in prices for tomatoes. Mr. Sanchez says the deal will ensure that U.S. producers have a "level playing field," which means consumers will pay prices far above production costs for Mexican tomatoes in order to subsidize the less competitive growers north of the border. Input on the agreement from consumers will be suppressed due to two factors: (1) a reportedly very short public comment period; (2) the fact that so-called "consumer" advocacy groups...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Unlike the 2022 fertilizer shock, today’s disruption is rooted less in rerouted trade flows and more in damaged production capacity, raw material constraints and uncertain recovery timelines. That makes this a longer-duration risk for U.S. agricultural producers and retailers who must sec...
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.