One has to greatly sympathize with the conclusions reached by Copa-Cogeca, Europe's central farm organization, that the EU Commission's pursuit of a trade agreement with the so-called Mercosur "common market" is a loser. NEI Update While the National Export Initiative (NEI) did not achieve its goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years, the Obama administration deserves credit for: 1) launching it, 2) making reasonable progress with the effort, 3) admitting rather than spinning its shortcoming and 4) revising it (NEI/Next) to obtain future success. USDA has long been in an aggressive export posture, and so the NEI has mostly improved efforts on behalf of other sectors. The focus of NEI/Next on Latin America reflects its disconnect from a...
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...
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.