Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The NCCC-134 Regional Research Committee sponsored its annual conference on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk Management on April 22-23 in St. Louis, Missouri. Twenty-six papers were presented by the authors and discussed among meeting participants. The conference meeting holds two concurrent sessions where research papers with similar methods, commodities, and/or issues are organized. The papers were selected by members of the NCCC-134 Executive Committee from 32 two-page prospectuses submitted prior to the conference.  Since last year, the number of submissions decreased from 52 to 32, which was more in line with our long-term average number of submissions. The resulting collection of papers ranged over futures and options market analysis, speculation, market information, effects and management of market risk, price forecasting evaluations, and several other price analysis topics. The format of the meeting allows for extensive discussion of the papers, results, and implications.

Following the research paper presentations on the first day of the meetings, a short business meeting of the NCCC-134 executive committee and other interested participants was held.  NCCC-134 Committee Co-Chairs, Olga Isengildina Massa and Mindy Mallory, led the meeting.  While participants acknowledged that St. Louis provided and good place for having this meeting, it was agreed that alternative locations would also be explored in the future years.

In general, it was acknowledged by the committee that there has been a resurgence of interest in the area of commodity price analysis and risk management given the recent high prices and volatility in commodity markets among other important issues. Given this, it was concluded that the NCCC-134 continues to be an important catalyst for research in the area of commodity price analysis and risk management.

Next year’s meeting is scheduled for April 14-15, 2025. Format will be similar to this year’s meeting with presented papers selected by a screening committee from a set of proposals due in October 2024. Andres Trujillo from the University of Idaho and Joseph Janzen from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign agreed to serve as committee coordinators for the next five years.

Meeting Adjourned: 3:00 p.m. April 23, 2024.

Respectfully submitted,

Olga Isengildina Massa, Virginia Tech University

Mindy Mallory, Purdue University

Co-Chairs, NCCC-134 Committee

Arne Hallam, Iowa State University

Administrative Advisor

Conference participants continue to emphasize that extensive discussions, constructive feedback and opportunities for collaboration among experts in this field are the most valuable features of this conference that draw participants from around the world. This year’s participants hailed from various organizations and universities in the US, Argentina, Ireland, Canada and Norway.  The meeting was held fully in-person with 43 participants, down from 56 participants last year.

Similar to last year, one of the main highlights of this year’s meeting was the increase of collaborations in presented research with 9 out of 26 papers, or 35% including or consisting of co-authors from different organizations/universities. This regional project is one of the main catalysts for these collaborative works. All participants attend this meeting to hear about state-of-the-art research conducted at other institutions that are in the area of expertise addressed by the project. As well, this meeting remains an important venue for graduate students to present their work. This year, 12 graduate students attended the conference, many of them presenting papers co-authored with faculty members.

Mindy Mallory also announced the procedure for submitting final papers to be posted as electronic proceedings on the NCCC-134 website. The site address is http://www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/nccc134/ . The site will continue to hold committee announcements as well as all papers from all past meetings.

Presented manuscripts will be digitally published at https://legacy.farmdoc.illinois.edu/nccc134/paperarchive.html after June 1, 2024.