Legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), but it has no chance at enactment. However, more notable is the concession in Washington by some policy supporters of biofuels. TPA Strategy Senate Democrats feared that House Republicans would pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) but not Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), so they insisted on tying the two together. Instead, it was House Democrats who blocked TAA in order to prevent enactment of TPA. Now the strategy is to pass TPA and TAA separately in the Senate and TPA in the House, forcing House Democrats to agree to TAA or else lose both on trade and the $450 million in labor retraining benefits. The gambit requires Senate Democrats t...
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...
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.