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As the EU presses its farmers to adopt practices that are environmentally sound, these producers increasingly agitate to have the same standards applied to food produced elsewhere and imported into Europe. It is an understandable plea for fairness but arriving at sound and equivalent measurements will be a challenge. According to FAO data, France and Germany apply more tons of nutrients per square kilometer of arable land than most other major agricultural producing countries except China. The first problem is the soundness of this data. Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., France and Germany all provide their official surveyed data to the FAO. However, the numbers used for Argentina, Brazil and China are, “official, semi-official, estimated,...
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.