Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Regional Research Project NE-165: Private Strategies, Public Policies, and Food System Performance (http://www.umass.edu/ne165/) ended in September 2002 after 16 years of operation. During its life, NE-165 became nationally and internationally recognized as the leading source of policy relevant economic research on the industrial organization of the food system; on the impacts of changes in strategies, technologies, consumer behavior, and policies on the economic performance of the food system; and on how private and public strategies influence improvement in food safety and other quality attributes. At its end, NE-165 had 114 members from the United States, Canada, the European Union, Turkey, Brazil, Japan, and New Zealand. The hallmark of NE-165 was to provide an organizational and human infrastructure that allowed economists to make their work more policy relevant through interaction with policy makers and regulators, while the policy makers and regulators gained better direct access to economic research relevant to their work. This termination report covers the last 6 years of the Project (October 1996 to September 2002). During this period, Project members were very productive, reporting 7 regional publications, 314 journal articles, 3 books, 4 edited proceedings, 105 book chapters, 178 station and agency publications, and 45 theses and dissertations related to their work on the Project. The Project was sole organizer or co-organizer of 7 research conferences between 1997 and 2002, while 9 books or special journal editions were published during this period as a result of these and earlier NE-165 conferences. Table 1 details these conferences and publications, as well as their policy relevance and impact. These conferences and publications highlight NE-165s contribution to the understanding of developing trends in the food system, including industrialization and consolidation in the agricultural, processing, and retailing sectors; introduction of new quality assurance systems such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP); the rapid growth of agricultural biotechnology; changes in domestic and international food demand; and the use of economic analysis in the risk management decisions of governments. A Japanese translation of many of the chapters from the NE-165 food safety books was published in 2002. NE-165 was a pioneer is making its output easily accessible to researchers around the world through its internet site and by posting papers on AgEcon Search. NE-165 operated throughout with a core research group at the Food Marketing Policy Center at the University of Connecticut, and by subcontract at the University of Massachusetts. The Center played a major role in supporting collaboration and communication within the Project. It helped organize the Project conferences, developed the NE-165 web site, and maintained a listserv for the group. The Center purchased and maintained 12 major data sets that were used on a regular basis by NE-165 members. The core group also provided support for the NE-165 Working Paper and Reprint Series, which were distributed to over 200 economists, research libraries, and others worldwide. A CSREES Special Research Grant funds the Food Marketing Policy Center.