Below is an excerpt from the most recent edition of WisBusiness Tuesday Trends.
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RISING
UW engineering: The University of Wisconsin-Madison joins an Obama administration effort to broaden the nation’s advanced manufacturing base. The White House named the campus a partner institution in its Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness, a two-year old national effort aimed at doubling the speed with which the county discovers, develops and manufactures new materials. As part of the announcement, the UW-Madison College of Engineering pledges an initial investment of $5 million to create the interdisciplinary Wisconsin Materials Innovation Institute. The WIMII will provide infrastructure for researchers in such areas as mathematics, statistics, computer sciences, information science, chemistry, medicine and engineering, and create synergy among materials researchers at UW-Madison and elsewhere.
MIXED
Agriculture: An unusually wet 2013 has delayed planting by farmers this spring. But a report from BMO Economics says this year’s ag prospects are still better than last year’s, when a drought wreaked havoc on fields across the Midwest. The report also notes that farmers in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin are in relatively strong shape compared to the rest of the region. One crop, however, has been hit particularly hard by the rainy spring. A report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says about 85 percent of the state’s soybean crop had been planted as of early last week — the crop was entirely planted at the same time last year — and that it’s getting too late for some to either finish planting or re-seed fields inundated with water. The rain is also making harvesting of spring crops, such as hay, difficult for many farmers. And dairy farmers are once again sounding the alarm over a potential spike in milk prices without a new farm bill. They are currently operating under an extension of the expired farm bill, but the House of Representatives shoots down a new bill last week.
FALLING
Commercial bail bonds: Observers had initially considered a budget provision to implement a five-county bail bonding pilot program a safe bet to make it past the governor’s veto pen this time around after Gov. Walker nixed statewide bonding in the previous budget. But amid strong opposition from the state’s legal community — including the Republican attorney general — Walker nixes the measure from the final budget, saying he has concerns about the policy of enabling bounty hunters. Bail bond companies argue the private market provides better resources to defendants, while supporters in the Legislature say judges can use bonds at their discretion and that they’re simply looking to get defendants back into court. Critics, however, say the state’s current bail system is working fine, and that bonding would have invited corruption into the judiciary.
