Extension Section Track Sessions

The objective of this symposium is to discuss the relative roles and performance of crop insurance and farm programs in the farm safety net and their potential roles in the agricultural support programs of the future. Three key topics would be addressed in this symposium: (1) a discussion of the expected interaction of crop insurance and farm programs that likely will emerge from the 2012 Farm Bill, (2) the impact on the private delivery system of program changes and budget cuts, and (3) an assessment of the respective roles of the public and private sectors in the delivery of agricultural support programs over the long run.

This session includes four presentations with a focus on wine marketing and policy. All four papers discuss implications for the wine industry. The first paper considers how consumers respond to information about appellations for wine from emerging production regions. The authors use auction data that uses three treatments to disentangle the effects of information related to domestic appellations and to more established appellations in Europe. The second paper examines how customer satisfaction in wineries' tasting rooms in the Finger Lakes region in New York impacts sales. The third paper estimates willingness to pay for wines with reduced SO2 content and investigates whether sulfite reduction represent a viable differentiation strategy in wine markets. The fourth paper explores the operation of U.S. drawbacks of import duties and excise taxes for wine by examining wine imports and exports and the patterns of import and export prices.

This Track Session addresses the issues and challenges for grain-based ethanol, cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel to meet the mandates to the year 2022 under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Issues include the ethanol blend wall transition from 10 percent to 15 percent, the role of E-85 and prospects for ethanol trade. On cellulosic conversion, costs of enzymes, development of infrastructure and possibilities for reaching the 16 billion gallon RFS2 will be examined. The extent to which biodiesel will fill the advanced biofuel mandate other than cellulosic will be postulated along with the prospects for DDGS corn oil as a feedstock.

Weather and climatic conditions are major sources of uncertainty in agricultural production. Climate science, computer modeling and agricultural technologies hold promise for better managing the uncertainty associated with weather. This symposium highlights some of the work being done to transform weather and climate information into more usable products for farmers. USDA-NIFA has recently funded the integrated research and extension project Useful to Usable (U2U): Transforming Climate Variability and Change Information for Cereal Crop Producers. This project is examining the interaction of weather and climate variables in agricultural production decisions across a twelve state region encompassing the Corn Belt. The three presentations for this symposium outline three different aspects of the U2U project. The first presentation will provide a corn production weather/climate-driven decision calendar to assist the above-mentioned stakeholders in connecting intra-seasonal and inter-seasonal agricultural weather/climate information. The second presentation will present preliminary results of on-going crop modeling efforts and the adaptive strategies for maximizing agronomic productivity and farm profitability while reducing the impact of climate-related risks. The third presentation will present the fieldwork days data and illustrate its incorporation into a decision support tool for a crop production decision such as fertilizer management. After the 3 presentations, the moderator will lead an audience discussion of the concepts presented. The objective will be to discover oversights in the current program and to garner insight into how weather and climate information can be transformed to create decision support tools through the outreach component of the project.

The proposed session will have three +/-30 minute presentations that primarily highlight the current and near-term situation and outlook of grain commodities. The panel of participants will bring unique insights to the discussion of the corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton markets by adding comments on "hot topics" of direct relevance to the U.S.. Finally, an open question and answer discussion will be moderated by the session organizer for +/- 30 minutes of interaction between presenters and the attending audience. The primary role of the moderator will be not only to generate discussion but to also highlight the implications for Extension economists.

This session will have a kickoff (+/-30 minute) presentation that primarily highlights the current and near-term situation and outlook of beef, pork, and dairy industries. This will be followed two shorter presentations (totaling +/- 30 minutes) from a panel of participants bringing unique insights to the discussion by adding comments focused on "hot topics" of direct relevance to U.S. livestock industries and markets. Finally, an open question and answer discussion will be moderated by the session organizer.

Congress deals with a broad range of policy issues-from long-standing, agriculture-specific issues such as commodity, conservation, and trade programs, to newer, cross-cutting issues such as energy and climate change. The presenters will provide their perspectives on policy issues affecting agriculture based on their work for the Congress, as well as perspectives on farm bill development. They also will seek comments and insights on issues from session attendees.

The Extension and Graduate Student sections of the AAEA will conduct a competition for graduate students on Extension programs. This competition involves Extension and Outreach applications, plans, and programs as developed by the graduate student competitors. A main purpose of the competition is to encourage graduate students to include in their professional education some appropriate and well developed Extension relevant analysis and planning related to their overall program.