Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Minutes of NC1034 Annual Meeting 7/21/2019

The annual Business Meeting of NC1034 “Impact Analyses and Decision Strategies for Agricultural Research” was held in conjunction with the group’s annual research conference.  This year’s conference theme was The Economics of Agricultural Technology & Innovation.

This year the annual conference was held as a special Pre-Conference to the annual meeting of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association held in Atlanta Georgia, July 21-23, 2019.

NC-1034 Pre-Conference Participants

USDA Multi-state Research Project NC-1034 "Impact Analyses and Decision Strategies for Agricultural Research" annual business meeting research conference on

The Economics of Agricultural Technology & Innovation

July 20-21, 2019

Atlanta, Georgia

Saturday, July 20

7:30 am Breakfast

8:15 am Welcome, George Frisvold

8:30 – 10:00 am

The Data-Intensive Farm Management Project:  Background, and an Examination of 2018 Trial Results. David Bullock, University of Illinois

Yield and Protein Response to Nitrogen in the Northern Great Plains.

Kate Binzen Fuller and Clain Jones, Montana State University

Estimating the Value of Innovation and Extension Information: The Case of SCN-Resistant Soybean Varieties. Seungki Lee and GianCarlo Moschini, Iowa State University

10:00 – 10:30 am Coffee Break

10:30 am – noon

What Determines Patent Grant and Value? In 4D, Clear Insights from Pre-Grant Citations.                    Zhen Sun, Tsinghua University, and Brian Wright, University of California, Berkeley

Venture Capital and the Transformation of Private R&D for Agriculture. Felipe de Figueiredo Silva, Clemson University, Gregory Graff, Colorado State University, and David Zilberman, University of California, Berkeley

Patentees’ Chinese choices, Patent Value Flow Dynamics, and Implications for U.S. Patent Value Proxies.  Siwei Cao, Beijing Normal University, Zhen Lei, Pennsylvania State University,  and Brian Wright, University of California, Berkeley

Noon – 1:30 pm Lunch (on your own)

1:30 – 3:00 pm

Does Variability in Traditional (Title I) and Crop Insurance (Title X) Programs Affect Efficiency and Productivity? Saleem Shaik, North Dakota State University

Public R&D and the Effects on Research Output and Total Factor Productivity in Chinese Agriculture. Haiyan Deng, Beijing Institute of Technology and Carl Pray, Rutgers University

Bioenergy and Its Implications to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Regions.                                                   Gal Hochman and Vijay Appasamy, Rutgers University

Saturday, July 20 (continued)

3:00 – 3:30 pm Coffee Break

3:30 – 5:00

Inputs, Outputs, and Total Factor Productivity in the U.S. Farm Sector:  A State-level Analysis.                 Sun Ling Wang, Eldon Ball, Richard Nehring, and Roberto Mosheim, USDA Economic Research Service

Accounting for Climatic Effects in Measuring U.S. Field Crop Farm Productivity.                                           Sun Ling Wang, Nicholas Rada, and Ryan Williams, USDA Economic Research Service

How Informed are U.S. Consumers about New Biotech Foods? A Potential Role for New Information. Katherine Lacy, University of Nevada, Reno, Wallace Huffman, Iowa State University, and Jonathan McFadden, USDA Economic Research Service

Sunday, July 21

8:30 – 9:30 am

Using Biotechnology for Regional Pest Eradication.                                                                                      George Frisvold, Ashley Kerna Bickel, and Dari Duval, University of Arizona

Bio-economic Modeling of Yield Effects of Genetically Modified Diamondback Moth (Plutella xylostella) Releases to Mitigate Resistance to Bt crops.                                                                                                           Michael S. Jones, Jennifer Baltzegar, and Nicole Gutzmann, North Carolina State University 

9:30 – 10:00 am Coffee Break

10:00 – 11:00 am

The Effects of Exposure Intensity on Technology Adoption and Gains: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh on the System of Rice Intensification.

Christopher Barrett, Cornell University, Asad Islam, Monash University, Abdul Malek, BRAC University,  Debayan Pakrashi, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and Ummul Ruthbah, Dhaka University

Do Chinese Restrictions on Trade and Foreign Direct Investment Reduce Profits of Foreign Firms and Increase the Competitiveness of Chinese Private and State-Owned Firms? A Case Study of Agricultural Input Industries. 

Carl Pray, Yanhong Jin and Tongpeng Deng, Rutgers University, Haiyan Deng and Changxin Yu, Beijing Institute of Technology

11:00 am – noon NC-1034 Business Meeting

Noon     Meeting Adjourns

Business Meeting, Atlanta Georgia, July 21, Commenced 11 a.m.

Report from Marshall Martin (Purdue) (project AA).

• NC-1034 is approved from 10/01/2016 to 09/30/2021
• So, the renewal process will begin in earnest September, 2020
• The 2020 NC-1034 meeting would be a good time to discuss what will need to get done and how the group wants to proceed regarding a project renewal
• For NC committees, the Directors are looking for evidence of coordinated research, not just the sharing of separate research findings annually. In the past NC-1034 has had book projects or other more coordinating activities. 

Points of order George Frisvold (Arizona), Outgoing NC-1034 President

• Working backwards from the last renewal
  • We were notified that NC-1034 was renewed for 10/01/2016 to 9/30/2021 on June 30, 2016
  • The final renewal proposal was submitted June 1, 2016
  • We received comments and a request for minor revisions of the initial (due June 1, 2016) by the NCRA MRC on April 8, 2016
  • The initial renewal proposal was submitted October 28, 2015
  • The first renewal deadline was September 15, 2105 for the "Request to Write a Proposal" step in NIMSS.
• To recap from last year’s meeting
  • George Frisvold is stepping down as NC-1034 as of this meeting
  • Gregory Graff agreed to serve as the new president
  • This change was approved by vote of participants at last year’s Washington, DC business meeting.

Report from outgoing NIFA representative Robbin Shoemaker

• Robbin announced that, in the wake of the move of NIFA to somewhere (as yet to be determined) in the Kansas City area, he will be retiring.
• He had been the only social scientist, let alone economist, serving as a NIFA national program leader.
• In the face of this loss in economics expertise at NIFA he expressed concerns about what this meant for USDA guidance and support for economics research in the future.
• He thought that the move to the Kansas City area was a done deal and that damage to NIFA could not be avoided. He suggested that the lack of social science expertise at NIFA would be an ongoing problem and suggested that NC-1034 participants might want to communicate that concern. 

Sun Ling Wang, the economist at USDA, Economic Research Service leading the program to measure U.S. and state-level productivity expressed concern about what would happen with the move of ERS to Kansas City.  She was unsure of who would remain with the agency and how the agency’s productivity measurement program would continue.  ERS had been making great strides if following recommendations of the Association of Agricultural and Economics Association to improve productivity measurement.  The most recent national productivity accounts are for the year 2015.  National estimates up to the year 2017 were originally planned for release at the end of 2019.  But, with the move, this is now uncertain.  ERS had also been working to update state-level productivity measures, but this may also be delayed. 

The other NC-1034 participants express deep appreciation to both Robbin and Sun Ling for the very important work they have done to serve agricultural economics research on productivity, technology, and innovation at land grant universities throughout the country. Participants asked if there was anything we could do to help ERS.  Sun Ling suggested that a more orderly and less abrupt transition would be less harmful.  

Participants discussed writing a letter to the pertinent USDA officials to (a) note the importance of ERS work on the economics of agricultural R&D and productivity and (b) suggest positive steps to lessen damage to data, expertise, and institutional memory. 

Discussion, then shifted to the 2020 NC-1034 conference and business meeting.  Gregory Graff offered to host the meeting in Colorado, perhaps Denver, perhaps Fort Collins. There was general approval of this offer, followed by discussion of activities that might be organized in conjunction with a meeting.  Some noted that a past NC-1034 was hosted by and included a tour at the Danforth Center.  One possibility might be to tour USDA National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins.  Another possibility would be Colorado biotechnology firm facilities. There was general agreement that a time around university spring breaks would be a good time for meetings. No specific dates were agreed upon, but there was general agreement that sometime in mid-to-late March would be good. 

Meeting adjourned noon.

Short-term Outcomes

• Research findings of NC-1034 participants were cited extensively in the National Academy of Science Sciences 2019 consensus report Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030.

 Outputs

• Participants had more than 50 publications in peer-review journals in addition to several book chapters in scholarly edited volumes.

  Activities

• NC-1034 participants were active in planning both a Pre-Conference and the main conference of the International Consortium on Bioeconomy Research (ICABR), on Regulation and Finance of Innovations for a Sustainable Economy, Ravello, Italy | June 4-7, 2019.
• Participants were active in organizing and presenting research findings at “Innovation in Agrifood Supply Chains: People-Planet-Profitability” the third annual training workshop sponsored by the College of Natural Resources, at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with Solidaridad North America, April 18-19, Berkeley, California

Milestones

• Several research articles of NC-1034 participants will be appearing in a Special Issue on "Sustainable Economics of Biotechnology" to be published in the journal Sustainability in 2019