Members in the News: July 1, 2024

Chad Hart, Iowa State University “Breaking Down Supply and Demand” By: Brownfield – June 17, 2024 “USDA Acreage Report Could Include Bearish Revisions” By: Brownfield – June 21, 2024 Lee Schulz, Iowa State University “Bird Flu Outbreak: Why Experts Say Egg Prices Could Skyrocket” By: News Week – June 20, 2024 “In the short term, the industry can adjust. So when you look at a typical month, we eat about 86 to 88% of the eggs that are laid. The other roughly 12 to 14% go back into replacing laying hens. In the short term, we can take more of those eggs that were going to replace those hens and provide that for the consumable eggs." (Continued...) Read more on: News Week Alejandro Plastina, Iowa State University “Cash Rent Rates For Iowa Remain Unchanged” By: Iowa Farmer Today – June 18, 2024 “Despite the increase in land values and farm operating costs, cash rents remained about the same as last year. From December 2022 to December of 2023, we’ve seen the rate of return to farmers decline from about 10% to 2%. Unless we see an increase in commodity prices, I expect rents will stay the same or decrease.” (Continued...) Read more on: Iowa Farmer Today Joana Colussi, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign “Catastrophic Floods Cause Major Disruptions to Brazil’s Agricultural Sector” By: Food Tank – June 24, 2024 “The inundated state of Rio Grande do Sul is one of the biggest soy-producing regions in Brazil, as well as its main rice-growing area, and both crops are expected to suffer from the historic flooding. Part of the crops will rot and be lost; others will have lower yields than expected.” (Continued...) Read more on: Food Tank Steven Deller, University of Wisconsin-Madison “Increasing Share of Total WI Income Going to Top Earners, Report Shows” By: WIS Business -  June 26, 2024 “Over the last several decades, a common frustration with the U.S. economy is that much of the benefit of economic growth flows to individuals at the highest income levels. While evidence of rising income inequality across the U.S. and Wisconsin is solid, there remains a lack of understanding about how changing income thresholds determine high incomes.”  (Continued...) Read more on: WIS Business David Ortega, Michigan State University “American Agriculture Can’t Afford Another Trade War with China” By: Newsweek – June 27, 2024 “American agriculture stands at a crossroads. With our farmers still reeling from the financial turmoil of the past few years, the prospect of another economic conflict with China is untenable. From 2018 to 2020, American farmers faced devastating losses due to the trade conflict with China. During this period, U.S. agricultural exports to China plummeted, with losses exceeding $25 billion. Soybean farmers felt the brunt of this impact. Their exports to China dropped sharply from $12.2 billion in 2017 to just $3.1 billion in 2018. This downturn prompted a 15 percent reduction in the soybean planted area by 2019, as farmers adjusted to a new economic landscape.” (Continued...) Read more on: Newsweek Amy Ando, The Ohio State University “What’s a Wild Bat Worth to You? This Economist is Asking” By: Vox – June 19, 2024 “One of the nation’s few environmental economists, Ando, a professor at The Ohio State University, tries to put a price tag on animals and ecosystems to make sure they’re adequately valued in our modern economy. Protecting nature from the many threats it faces, such as deforestation and climate change, can be expensive. Ando’s goal is to make sure the benefits of those protections are not overlooked.” (Continued...) Read more on: Vox Ani Katchova, The Ohio State University “Farmland Losses Far Outpace Preservation” By: Ohio’s Country Journal – June 13, 2024 “From 2002 to 2022, Ohio lost 931,089 acres of land in farms, according to a recent report from The Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES). Ani Katchova, professor and farm income enhancement chair, in the CFAES Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics (AEDE) and graduate students Xiaoyi Fang and Rae Ju, compiled and published the report “Ohio Farm Numbers, Land in Farms, and Agricultural Land Lost to Development” released in March.” (Continued...) Read more on: Ohio’s Country Journal Seungki Lee, The Ohio State University “How Forecasts of Bad Weather Can Drive Up Your Grocery Bill” By: Grist – June 10, 2024 ‘“When it comes to the climate risk on food prices, people typically look at the production side. But over the last two years, we learned that extreme weather can raise food prices, [cause] transportation disruptions, as well as production disruptions,” said Lee." (Continued...) Read more on: Grist Brian Roe, The Ohio State University “USDA Announces Expansion of Interagency Collaboration to Help Reduce Food Loss and Waste” By: USDA – May 30, 2024 “Ohio State University will conduct and evaluate a pilot consumer campaign to develop educational messages and materials that meaningfully reduce the amount of U.S. household food waste. Lessons learned from the pilot will be used to develop an integrated education program for governmental and non-governmental organizations for local consumer food waste reduction campaigns.” (Continued...) Read more on: USDA Andrew Stevens, University of Wisconsin–Madison “Fourth of July Cookout Costs in US Rise By 5% This Year, Survey Finds” By: Reuters – June 27, 2024 “Still, the overall increase of food prices in the United States in 2024 is expected to be about 2%, down from an average of 3% annually. Yes, food prices are increasing, but they're not increasing as much as they have in recent years, and they're even a little below the long-run average. U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in May.” (Continued...) Read more on: Reuters Daniel Sumner, University of California, Davis “Avocado Inspectors Attacked, Could Lead to Shortage in California” By: CBSN News – June 21, 2024 “Fewer avocados overall could result in higher prices soon. The typical market response to a drop in imports would be for prices to rise to ration what little production is available to buyers who are willing to pay very high prices. Overall, he anticipates that avocados will become more expensive if the disruption lasts longer than a week. Mounting evidence also suggests that this could happen again, too.” (Continued...) Read more on: CBSN News Joseph Balagtas, Purdue University “White House Addresses Ongoing Grocery Inflation Woes” By: Drugstore News – June 21, 2024 “While food inflation has slowed in 2024, consumers are feeling the cumulative effect of the high inflation we’ve experienced,” said the report’s lead author, Joseph Balagtas, professor of agricultural economics and director of the school’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability. (Continued...) Read more on: Drugstore News Scott Swinton, Michigan State University “New 'Detective Work' on Butterfly Declines Reveals a Prime Suspect” By: Star Tribune – June 22, 2024 "It's a story about unintended consequences, a professor of agricultural economics at Michigan State University and one of the study's authors. "In developing technologies that were very effective at controlling soybean aphid and certain other agricultural pests, nontarget species that we care about, butterflies in particular, have been harmed." (Continued...) Read more on: Star Tribune Brandon McFadden, University of Arkansas “Study Shows the More You Know About GMOs, the More You Accept Them as Safe” By: Eureka Alert – June 21, 2024 “People who have heard or read a lot about gene editing generally have a favorable opinion about using it for agricultural or medical purposes. So, people who are less familiar with gene editing are likelier to think it is unsafe.” (Continued...) Read more on: Eureka Alert Chad Fiechter, Purdue University “What Agtech Can Learn From the Indy 500: a Conversation About Data and Uncertainty With Purdue’s Chad Fiechter” By: AFN – June 24, 2024 “Lots and lots of people have talked about data and collected data and tried to bring value to producers.  To me, it seems like we need to be working together to get all of the data in one spot so that we can actually understand what is the uncertainty and how farmers [can] manage the uncertainty.” (Continued...) Read more on: AFN