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 14-15 at the Illini Center in Chicago, Illinois, changing venues from the traditional location in St. Louis, Missouri. Twenty-five papers were presented by their authors and discussed by meeting participants. The conference consisted of two sets of concurrent sessions with research papers with grouped by empirical method, commodity, and/or issue. Papers were selected by members of the NCCC-134 Executive Committee from 38 two-page prospectuses submitted prior to the conference.  Selected papers covered topics in futures and options market analysis, market speculation, market information, effects and management of market risk, price forecasting evaluations, and several other price analysis topics. The format of the meeting allowed for extensive discussion of the papers, results, and implications for future research.

Following the research paper presentations on the second 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, Joe Janzen and Andres Trujillo, led the meeting.  Participants broadly voiced satisfaction with the current location and format of the meeting. Chicago was considered an accessible and low-cost travel destination and the Illini Center provided a suitable venue for meeting. Participants expressed a preference to continue at this location and venue for next year.

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 20-21, 2026. The format will be similar to this year’s meeting with presented papers selected by a screening committee from a set of proposals due in November 2025. Andres Trujillo from the University of Idaho and Joseph Janzen from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will continue to serve as committee coordinators for the period 2025-2029.

Meeting Adjourned: 3:00 p.m. April 15, 2025.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Janzen, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Andres Trujillo-Barrera, University of Idaho

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 networking and collaboration among experts in this field are the most valuable features of this conference. Interest and participation in the meeting grew year-over-year. Relative to 2024, the number of submissions increased from 32 to 38, which is slightly above the long-term average number of submissions for this meeting.  Attendance was fully in-person with 52 participants, up from 42 last year, in spite of the same number of presented papers. The meeting attracted participants from 19 US states, plus Argentina, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway. Opportunities to interact with industry participants, including the luncheon speaker, Fred Seamon, Executive Director of Agricultural Markets at the CME Group are also a major draw.

Similar to last year, one of the main highlights of this year’s meeting was the increase in multi-state collaborations in presented research: 10 out of 25 papers, or 40% included 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, 14 graduate students attended the conference, many of them presenting papers co-authored with faculty members.

Andres Trujillo-Barrera announced the procedure for submitting final papers to be posted as electronic proceedings on the NCCC-134 website, and followed up with emails to submit the electronic documents. The website of the conference was significantly updated and is now held at: https://farmdoc.illinois.edu/nccc134. The site will continue to hold committee announcements as well as all papers from all past meetings.