Agriculture’s Gig Workers A consortium of leftist, environmental and anti-meat activists is suing U.S. meat companies for marketing their products as produced by independent family farmers. The groups argue that due to the contracting system utilized, the meat is instead the output of corporate-controlled factory farms. Notable is that they have filed their complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The contracting system in poultry and increasingly in pork is despised by farmers that fail to produce to the standards of the contract but the vast majority of producers have successful operations in large part due to the highly refined production systems devised by their “clients.” The technical argument before the FT...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
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.