True Conclusion Art Cullen, publisher of Iowa’s The Storm Lake Times, correctly opines that most farmers want to protect the soil and the environment, if only it did not hurt them financially. The problem is a lack of resources to make it an inherent business practice. Nature demands change and most farm groups support USDA efforts to expand support for better agricultural practices. Carbon markets are in their infancy, but they are coming. Like the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy revisions currently being negotiated, the next U.S. farm bill will lend more support and direction to All the Above EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowksi has long been a proponent of small and medium sized farms. He has lamented the...
From WPI Consulting
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.