Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The 2023 annual meeting and research conference for the NC1034 multistate project coincided with a workshop organized by USDA-ERS, Farm Foundation, and the GAP Initiative  Global, Virginia Tech (USDA-ERS, FF, VT workshop) on March 29-30 in Arlington VA. Sun Ling Wang, of ERS and an NC1034 member, was the lead organizer of the workshop. Several members of NC1034 were invited to speak--including Brent Hueth (USDA-ERS), Richard Perrin (U of Nebraska), Keith Fuglie (USDA-ERS), Guanming Shi (U of Wisconsin), Gregory Graff (Colorado State), Julian Alston (UC Davis)--and the organizers of that workshop extended a special invitation to all other members of NC1034 to attend that by-invitation-only workshop in person. The schedule of events are as follows:

Wednesday March 29:
7:30-4:45 USDA-ERS, Farm Foundation, Virginia Tech workshop, Day 1 (Virginia Tech Executive Briefing Center)
Thursday March 30: 
8:00-4:45 USDA-ERS, Farm Foundation, Virginia Tech workshop, Day 2 (Virginia Tech Executive Briefing Center)
5:00-8:00 NC1034 business meeting, reception, and Dinner (Ballston Local restaurant)
Friday March 31
8:00-2:00  NC-1034 paper sessions (Virginia Tech Executive Briefing Center)

At the business meeting we announced the retirement of our current advisor, Ann Dorrance of Ohio State University (who was not present) and the appointment of a new advisor, Tala Awada of the University of Nebraska (also not present). Participants from Nebraska provided encouraging remarks about the opportunity to work under the adivsing of Dr Awada. After a short discussion, the decision was made to hold the next annual meeting in Colorado in the spring of 2024, with details to be decided at a later date. (A previous meeting had been planned to be held in Colorado in Apriil 2020, but was cancelled due to covid.) Potential themes for next year's conference were proposed, including innovation in soil carbon sequestration and innovation in big data for agriculture. Volunteers for the 2024 planning committee were Carl Pray of Rutgers University and Brian Wright of UC Berkeley. Greg Graff was selected to continue as chair/coordinator of NC1034 for another year.

The formal membership of NC1034 participants affiliated through their ag experiment station or USDA grew this year to 41. In addition to this increasing membership, we have an informal network of over 60 additional colleagues and collaborators on our contact list, many of whom attend NC1034 events and collaborate as coauthors with NC1034 members.

In 2023 NC1034 participants generated over 100 publications on topics related to the themes of the NC1034 project. (See publications list.) Of these, 20 publications (or about one fifth of the total) involved two or more NC1034 participants as co-authors in 2023 alone.

In March 2023 the NC1034 project membership joined forces with USDA Economic Research Service, the Farm Foundation, and the Global Agricultural Productivity initiative at Virginia Tech to produce a multi-day set of events in the Washington DC area exploring determinants of agricultural productivity, with a wide range of senior scholars and federal policymakers in attendance.

For example, NC1034 hosted keynote speaker Stephanie Mercier, former chief economist of the US Senate agriculture committee, now collaborating with one of our members, Vince Smith of Montana State University, on policy advising with the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.  

Other accomplishments and impacts submitted by individual NC1034 members follow:

Chris Barrett

• briefings to Members of Congress (20 in April, 14 in October) as part of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program.
• American Risk and Insurance Association 2023 Robert I. Mehr Award for the Journal of Risk and Insurance article published ten years earlier that has “best stood the test of time”, for Chantarat et al. 2013 that developed a new design for index insurance for livestock keepers.
• Agricultural & Applied Economics Association’s Outstanding American Journal of Agricultural Economics Article Award, 2022 for Barrett, Islam, Malek, Pakrashi & Ruthbah, which evaluated a new rice production method and had been presented at NC1034 at an earlier stage.
• named to the Editorial Board (equivalent to an Associate Editor), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023-26

Gregory Graff

• continued partnership with Office of Chief Economist US Patent and Trademark Office on impact of patent system on venture capital funding of ag startups
• working with World Intellectual Property Organization on case study for innovation complexity in agtech
• launched program engaging graduate students on innovation projects with industry partners as part of new Masters of Agribusiness and Food Innovation Management

Giancarlo Moschini

• Moschini, G. (w/ J. Luo and E. Perry), “Switching costs in the US seed industry: Technology adoption and welfare impacts,” XVII EAAE Congress, Rennes, France, 1 September 2023.
• Moschini, G. (w/ R. Chandra and G. Lade), “Geographical Indications and Welfare: Evidence from the US Wine Market,” XVII EAAE Congress, Rennes, France, 31 August 2023.
• Moschini, G. (w/ S. Lee and E. Perry), “Genetically engineered varieties and applied pesticide toxicity in U.S. maize and soybeans,” NC1034 Annual Research Conference, Arlington, VA, March 2023.
• Moschini, G., “Comments of two presentations,” Agricultural Productivity Workshop, USDA-ERS and the Farm Foundation, Arlington, VA, March 2023.
• Moschini, G. (w/ E. Perry), “Innovation, Licensing, and Competition in the US seed industry,” University of Guelph, Canada, November 2022.

Brian Wright

• Collaborated in a large interdisciplinary and multicampus study of the implications of climate change for wheat breeding in the United States, which resulted in an article in Global Change Biology.
• Supervised a doctoral dissertation on patent valuation by Wenjun Wang. This formed the basis for a presentation by Wang and Wright at the annual meeting of NC1034.

David Zilberman

• This year, our work emphasized further understanding of the transition from innovation to supply chains that implement them. We concluded a large survey on supply chains in developing countries and analyzed the evolution of water supply chain and the associated supply chain of innovations such as drip irrigation.
• Another direction was the further analysis of the bioeconomy and the mechanisms that lead to its establishment.
• Finally, we worked with some of our collaborators on assessing the cost of banning GMOs and the benefit of future technologies that utilize CRISPR.