In Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is straddling a rough course between defending its key farm constituency from overseas competition and liberalizing its economic relations with other nations under the intended ultra-liberal TransPacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations. The government's negotiators are refusing to brief LDP party members or their farm constituents under the guise that they've signed a secrecy agreement. If negotiators concede market access to agricultural imports, the LDP will have to craft some form of mitigating policies to ease the burden on around two million people. However, the Nikkei reports that the LDP cannot begin talking about the form that the mitigation will take because that will signa...
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...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.