Despite claims by U.S. Farm Bill critics like Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) that the American food system is “broken,” Congress will not radicalize its policies during a global food security crisis. Just as the EU has backed off from near-term and stringent production restrictions in its F2F CAP reform effort, few American politicians will take the risk of making a bad situation worse. Farm bills are complex policy vehicles will hundreds of moving and interdependent parts. Even seemingly rational policy changes can radically shift the crops that are grown, or the budgetary limits assigned to them. The last major policy change, Freedom to Farm in the 1996 Farm Bill, became derisively known as Freedom to Fail and force...
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.