Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Minutes from the annual meeting last year were read and approved by the members present. Osei-Agyeman Yeboah of North Carolina A&T University was elected secretary-treasurer of SERA 30 for the upcoming year. John Westra of Louisiana State University will serve as Vice-President and Diane Hite of Auburn University will serve as President of SERA 30 next year. The next meeting is tentatively scheduled to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana in conjunction with a national conference that the Center for Natural Resource Economics and Policy (CNREP) at LSU is organizing under the direction of John Westra. The two main themes will be interaction of land management and water (quantity and quality) and economics of extreme events (global climate change, natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, drought, etc.). The next meeting will be held after graduation (late May, 2007), but no firm dates were determined. An invited paper session for the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting was discussed but it was decided that there didn't appear to be a critical mass of papers of any one theme to submit a proposal. Registration fees this year will likely be sufficient to cover expenses associated with the annual meeting. However, there were not enough funds to help with any additional expenses, such as SERA 30 website development. We discussed the difficulty in finding the proceeding of SERA 30 meetings that have been posted on Southern Rural Development Center's website at Mississippi State University. However, Krishna Paudel has agreed to have a graduate student at LSU develop a dedicated website on the Department of Agricultural Economics server Louisiana State University. SERA 30 agreed to provide funds ($4,000) for site development and $500 per year for website maintenance. Paudel will request the funds directly from Bill Park at the University of Tennessee who maintains a checking account with the SERA 30 funds. Bob Shulstad reported on provisional renewal of SERA 30, informing that we need to submit Application E forms and a revised project proposal. Farm Foundation requested an issue report from the meeting. These are lay-oriented and consolidated for each topic covered in the meeting.

For each SERA 30 meeting, a major topic and a subtopic relevant to southern agriculture and natural resources are chosen. A call for papers goes out to a wide range of individuals, including those outside the group. In the 2006 meeting, participants focused on economics of homeland security and invasive species . This year we were successful in attracting papers by several individuals outside the group. Two presentations from outsiders focused on homeland security issues: David Bransby of Auburn University presented a paper on bioenergy and its potential role in national security and Eugene Simpson or Auburn University presented a paper on the potential economic impacts of avian influenza in Alabama. An invited paper by a USDA economist, Lynn Garret of USDA-APHIS, focused on the other main theme this year  economics of invasive species. In addition to these three papers, 15 papers by members of SERA 30 were presented. Six papers, including the two papers described above, presented research on one of the main themes  the economics of homeland security. Yeboah et al. described preliminary findings from a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the incidence of BSE in the US beef market. In two different papers, Ho et al. examined peoples risk perceptions and the impacts of property values for residents of counties adjacent to and near the chemical munitions incinerator in Anniston Alabama. Last under this theme, Hanson described a national risk management project involving the feasibility of insurance products in the aquaculture industry. Three papers, including the one described above, were presented in the area of the economics of invasive species  the other main theme of the 2006 annual meeting. Mullen et al. presented a theoretical description of how invasive species colonize, while Westra et al. described regional and national economic impacts of simulated infestations of Asian Soybean Rust in the U.S. Titles of all the papers presented can be found in the publications list following. These papers will be published in proceedings later in 2006 and posted to the SERA 30 website and the Farm Foundation website.

"The Potential Role of Bioenergy in National Security and Environmental Sustainability." David Bransby, Auburn University. "BSE Incidence and the US Beef Trade: A General Equilibrium Modeling." Osei-Agyeman Yeboah, Victor Ofori-Boadu and Blessing Mandizha, NC A&T State University, and Henry Thompson, Auburn University. "Economic Impact of Avian Influenza in Alabama." Eugene Simpson, Auburn University. "Determinants of Risk Perception Associated with the Anniston, AL: Results of a Direct Mail Survey." And "Property Value Impacts of the Anniston, AL Chemical Warhead Incinerator." Sa Chau Ho, Christophe de Parisot and Diane Hite, Auburn University. "National Risk Management Feasibility Program for Aquaculture - Examining the Feasibility of Aquaculture Insurance." Terry Hanson, Mississippi State University. "The Economics of Invasive Species." Lynn R. Garret, USDA-APHIS. "Modeling the Determinants of Invasive Species Isolated Colonies: An Analysis of Their Formation and Control." Jeffrey Mullen, Keith Douce and Michael Wetzstein, University of Georgia. "Asian Soybean Rust: Simulated Economic and Environmental Impacts Nationally and for the Southern U.S." John V. Westra, Louisiana State University, Robert C. Johansson and Michael J. Livingston, USDA-ERS. "The value of open space in rural and suburban areas: a spatial hedonic approach". Andres Jauregui, Columbus State University, Diane Hite, Auburn University, and Brent Sohngen, Ohio State University. "Explaining Citizen Attitudes in the U.S. about Children Learning to Hunt and Implications for State Regulation of Game Populations through Licensed Hunting." David LaBand and Shaun Tanger, Auburn University. "Economic Analysis of Demand for Urban Forests". Pengyu Zhu, Yaoqi Zhang, Auburn University. "Recreation on Timberland as a Source of Income for Rural Economies and Private Forestland Owners." Ellene Kebede, Tuskegee University. "A Simple Bioeconomic Modeling of Land Use Change and its Impact on Water Quality and Agricultural Returns." Gandhi Raj Bhattarai, Diane Hite, Puneet Srivastava, Upton Hatch and Luke Marzen, Auburn University. "Eastern North Carolina Counties Exposure to Hog Waste: Are there Racial Inequities?" Edward Fosu, Osei-Agyeman Yeboah, and Terrence Thomas, N.C A&T State University. "Poverty, Language and Participation in Non-Farm Labor Markets in Rural Paraguay." Daniel Corrella and Greg Traxler, Auburn University. "Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept Differences among Broiler Producers in Louisiana." Krishna P. Paudel, Louisiana State University. "A Multinomial Logit Model to Evaluate Factors Affecting Coastal Recreational Visits in Louisiana." Nirmala Devkota Krishna P. Paudel Rex H. Caffey and Larry Hall, Louisiana State University.