Camel’s Nose USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack appeared to discount Mexico’s plan to ban glyphosate and GMO corn by saying it would not affect U.S. feed corn being shipped south. However, the U.S. ships a certain amount of white corn to Mexico for human consumption and, more importantly, Mr. Vilsack’s agricultural constituency sees the Mexican proposal as the camel’s nose under the tent. After all, Mexican President López Obrador says the goal is self-sufficiency and consequently the ban is based on protectionism. It also violates the obligation to sound science and the USMCA included stronger language on biotechnology. The Secretary seemed to assure that the matter would come up under USMCA consultations, but Ameri...
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.