A variety of issues raised at a previous hearing with USDA Secretary Vilsack are expected to spill over into a more technical discussion with Under Secretary Kevin Concannon and FNS Administrator Audrey Rowe.The House Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture will hold a hearing tomorrow on nutrition programs. Testifying before the subcommittee will be Under Secretary Kevin Concannon, Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) Administrator Audrey Rowe and USDA Budget Officer Michael Young. As previously reported, a hearing with USDA Secretary Vilsack on 14 March turned into a nutrition program hearing during the question and answer session. At that hearing, Representative Tom Latham (R-Iowa) asserted that farmers in Iowa no longer believe USDA is o...
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...
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.