Pandemic Growing Uncertainty Over COVID-19’s Origin Deepens Rift Despite the hot start for U.S. agricultural exports to China in 2021, Beijing’s lack of transparency in investigating the origins of COVID-19 continues to draw scrutiny. More news reports concerning researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) becoming ill and seeking hospital care in November 2019 have resulted in skeptical health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and other researchers in Europe to question the thoroughness of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) joint report with colleagues in China about the pandemic’s origins. Previously, the notion that the disease had “escaped” WIV due to poor biohazard security practices an...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.