Macroeconomics Food Inflation Reverses Course, Falls in December With pork prices continuing to remain well below their averages from a year ago, food costs on aggregate fell by 1.2 percent in December. That reverses course from November when food inflation climbed by 1.6 percent, the first uptick since May. The cost of pork dropped by 36.7 percent year-on-year last month, as the November rally in live hog prices ended. Meanwhile, other categories saw their average prices rise from a year ago, albeit at a slower pace than in November. These included fresh vegetables, cooking oil, and eggs, which jumped by 10.6 percent, 6.4 percent, and 12.7 percent from December 2020. In contrast, fresh fruit prices, which rose by 4.8 percent from a year...
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.