Members in the News: Sumner, Lusk, Ferraro, and Janzen

Daniel Sumner, University of California-Davis Could California produce soon cost you more? Farms face labor shortages, immigration woes By: USA Today - January 27, 2019 “The answer is you’d barely notice the price difference,” says Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California-Davis. But, Sumner adds, if some farmers hold out on overtime pay, others will be similarly inclined to avoid the up-charge to their business model. That could lead farmers to try and circumvent the new law by perhaps sharing workers with a neighboring farm so no one goes over a 55-hour work week, or working with farm labor contractors who aren’t clear about how many hours their workers have already put in. “This all could lead to funny business, and those are the worries,” he says. (Continued...) Read more on: USA Today Jayson Lusk, Purdue University Super Bowl sends prices up for fan favorite chicken wings but your dip could be a bargain this year By: CNBC - January 31, 2019 The price of chicken wings increases about 7 percent for about a week before the Super Bowl, according to Jayson Lusk, who heads the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. For about a week following the game, prices fall 4 to 5 percent. "Every time there's a Super Bowl, about a week before, there's an uptick in (wing) prices," Lusk said. "That would definitely be consistent with an increase in demand around that time." The National Chicken Council estimates fans will eat 1.38 billion chicken wings throughout Super Bowl weekend, 2 percent higher than last year's estimate. That amount of chicken wings is enough to put 640 wings on every seat in all 31 NFL stadiums, the NCC noted in a statement. Those percent increases are based off of data from the last decade, but Lusk says the Super Bowl's effect on chicken wing prices is present but "less pronounced" all the way back to the early 1990s. (Continued...) Read more on: CNBC Paul Ferraro, Johns Hopkins University Fight Climate Change by Fighting for Cheaper Clean Energy Written by Paul Ferraro: Bloomberg - January 29, 2019 Mitigating climate change is easy. We need only make it more expensive to emit greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, that would also make energy more expensive, and many people would prefer that governments make energy less expensive. Witness the protests started over a modest gas tax in France, a leader in international climate change negotiations. Rather than work against this incentive — and continue to be surprised at the glacial pace of progress against climate change — an international agreement should try to harness it. It’s time to abandon the effort to secure a global deal to lower emissions, and instead work toward an agreement to make sizable investments in clean-energy technology. Incentives matter — a lot. Successful international agreements — including the Montreal Protocol, which phased out ozone-depleting substances, and the marine convention MARPOL 73/78, which lowered pollution from ships — have mainly required actions by just a few countries, the ones that also benefited most from their efforts. Once these countries acted, the incentive for others to join the agreements grew. (At this point, all United Nations members have ratified the Montreal Protocol.) (Continued...) Read more on: Bloomberg Joseph Janzen, Kansas State University New dicamba regulations emerge, 2019 soybean yields trending, where are prices headed? By: High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal - January 31, 2019 Joe Janzen, assistant professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University, discussed factors that affected 2018 soybean prices as well as what can be expected in 2019.  One main factor was the trade war with China, which during the months of May and June of 2018 caused soybean prices to decline.  “Stocks, trade, competition with South America and 2019 acres are forming factors that got us to where we are today and will continue to play out over the next year or so,” Janzen said.  With keeping those four factors in mind, Janzen believes U.S. soybeans supply will be plentiful heading into the 2019 marketing year.  (Continued...) Read more on: High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal

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*Articles in response to the AAEA Communicating Out Strategy Press Releases highlighting: Government Relations, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, Choices Magazine, General Media, and/or 2018 AAEA Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.