A bill that would prohibit the use of the term “milk” on the labels of soy, almond and other plant-based milks is working its way through the committees of the Virginia General Assembly. It is a companion bill to legislation that was already passed and enacted in North Carolina (and Maryland), but the Virginia and North Carolina legislation can’t be enforced until 11 other states enact similar legislation. Both bills use the authority of the Southern Dairy Compact (SDC), which was modeled after the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact (NEIDC) in place to regulate milk prices from 1996 to 2002. The states in the SDC adopted compact implementing legislation from 1997 to 2001. Maryland is not part of the compact. The 14 states...
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.