Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Minutes from the annual meeting last year were read and approved by the members present. Dan Petrolia of Mississippi State University was elected secretary of SERA 30 for the upcoming year. Laila Racevskis of the University of Florida will serve as Vice-President and Jeff Mullen of the University of Georgia will serve as President of SERA 30 next year. The next meeting is being arranged by the Vice-President, Laila Racevskis of the University of Florida; location and date to be determined later. During the business meeting, Bob Shulstad, our Academic Advisor from the Experiment Station, presented information on Multistate Research and Extension Projects. This led to the SERA 30 members discussing the advantages and disadvantages of transforming the group from an Information Exchange Group to a Multistate Project. At the end of the discussion, it was decided to develop a Wiki page to poll all members of SERA 30 about their preferences for how the group should continue. During the ensuing month the Wiki page was online, the general consensus of the membership was that we should spend some more time talking about this and develop a more formal plan to address a Multistate Project, if that is what the membership desired. This path was selected primarily because the timeframe, between the 2009 Annual Meeting and the deadline for submission of the paperwork for Multistate Projects was about one month - too short a time period to sufficiently gauge the membership's wishes. This resulted in a request for a one-year extension of the existing SERA 30 project being sent to the SERA Review Committee of the Southern Association of Agricultural Experiment Station Directors (SAAESD). The request was approved in early July 2009. The annual meeting and workshop of SERA 30 was held at the University of Georgia and hosted by the Department of Agricultural Economics at that university. Registration fees for this jointly-held workshop and meeting were sufficient to cover expenses associated with the annual meeting, as only expenses for breaks and lunch were incurred. For those interested, the most recent project proposal Application and Appendix forms E are available in the NIMSS system at: http://www.nimss.umd.edu/homepages/home.cfm?trackID=6576 That project was valid through September 30, 2009 before the extension was implemented.

For each SERA 30 meeting, a major topic and a subtopic relevant to southern agriculture and natural resources are chosen. A call for papers went out to a wide range of individuals, including those outside the group. In the 2009 meeting, participants focused on three main themes: the economics of ecosystem services, valuing coastal resource amenities, and economics of water quality. This year we were twelve papers presented by SERA 30 researchers and graduate students working with those researchers. Two papers presented research on the first main theme of the SERA 30 meeting - the economics of ecosystem services. Bergstrom from the University of Georgia gave an overview of and delineation of ecosystem services. Westra et al. of Louisiana State University described findings from a project watershed in Minnesota that estimated physical changes in agroecosystems and estimated economic values of those services. The second theme - the valuing coastal resource amenities - had three papers. Cho and Kim from the University of Tennessee presented research findings about how people's preferences for environmental attributes change. Kriesel and Mullen, from the University of Georgia, described their findings from a study estimating marshland values in coastal areas of Georgia. Last, Petrolia and Kim, from Mississippi State University, presented findings from their research into willingness to pay for barrier island restoration projects in the Gulf of Mexico. Water-related issues, quality and quantity, are always popular research topics. This year was no exception, with four papers related to this topic being presented. First, Keiser and Mullen, from the University of Georgia, presented findings from a water quality trading project they are currently completing. Next, Moore and Price, also from the University of Georgia, talked about a project focused on estimating the economic effects of using water more efficiently in agricultural production. We next were treated to two projects from Louisiana related to Best Management Practices (BMPs) in agricultural designed to address Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) restrictions in watersheds. First, Westra et al., from Louisiana State University, described results from BMPs being implemented to address nitrogen water quality concerns in a Mississippi Delta watershed. Hall and Paudel, Louisiana State University, described findings from an economic analysis looking at BMPs in the dairy industry north of Lake Pontchartrain. The last three papers covered various topics. Titles of all the papers presented can be found in the publications list following. These papers will be published in proceedings later in 2009 and posted to the SERA 30 website.

Classifying Ecosystem Services. John Bergstrom, University of Georgia. Potential Ecosystem Services Science and Policy Considerations. John Westra, Louisiana State University, with G. Boody, P. Gowda, C. van Schaik, P. Welle and D. Johnson. Changes in Preferences for Environmental Attributes. Seong-Hoon Cho and Seung Gyu Kim, University of Tennessee. Marshland Valuation in Glynn County. Warren Kriesel and Jeff Mullen, University of Georgia. Sensitivity of WTP. Dan Petrolia and Tae-Goun Kim, Mississippi State University. Water Quality Trading. David Keiser and Jeff Mullen, University of Georgia. Efficiency in Water Use. Rebecca Moore and Joe Price, University of Georgia. TMDLs in LA. John Westra and Augustus Matekole, Louisiana State University, with Timothy Appelboom. Dairy BMPs. Larry Hall and Krishna Paudel, Louisiana State University. Poverty and Sprawl. Seong-Hoon Cho and Su Hyun Jung, University of Tennessee. Land Use Change and Energy. Gbenga Ojumu, Ermanno Affuso and Diane Hite, Auburn University. Soil Quality Management. Joe Price and J. Egenolf, University of Georgia.