UpFront
Market diversion What’s that weed?
Web site can answer questions about field weeds
With delayed planting comes a series of changes from the “normal” season. One of them, due to different timing of tillage or herbicide application, is a changed spectrum of weeds. If you see something that you usually don’t deal with, why not have a look at the University of Missouri weed identification page at http://weedid.missouri.edu. The site is searchable by weeds’ common names and will give you details about the plant. Also at the site is a handy herbicide injury guide (http://weedscience.missouri. edu/herbinjury.htm). |
Iowa Electronic Market is a study in prediction markets
With sharp fingers of hedge funds and speculators perforating the normal cycles of agricultural markets, you may be looking for something to take off your marketing duties. Maybe you’d like a little speculation of your own. That’s what the Iowa Electronic Market offers participants— the ability to take contract positions on events like the presidential race or how popular a movie will be. But for the folks who run it, the market is a serious academic study.
The University of Iowa developed the IEM to be an Internet-based teaching and research tool. It allows participants to invest real money (as little as $5) and to trade in a variety of contracts.
Since its inception in 1988, over 100 universities throughout the world have enrolled in the IEM (mainly large research-oriented institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Michigan, and Northwestern). Faculty members use the IEM in accounting, finance, macroeconomics, microeconomics and political science courses across the country. The IEM is used to teach business, economics and technology concepts in a hands-on interactive environment. Over time, the IEM has been successful at predicting outcomes, often times outperforming polls.
We took a look at the market as this issue went to press and found brisk trading. Here was the market intelligence for Democratic presidential candidates just after the North Carolina and Indian primaries:
The contract for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost well more than half its value in trading on the University of Iowa’s Iowa Electronic Markets following her defeat in the North Carolina primary Tuesday.
Half a century of compact equipment
Bobcat Fifty YearsFormat: Hardbound
Pages: 216
Length: 10.25 w x 10.25 h
ISBN-13: 9780760328149
ISBN: 0760328145
Catalog ID: 144228
Price: $34.95 Click here to buy
This book celebrates a half-century of Bobcat and presents the full story of the unique compact machines. It is a detailed corporate history filled with a rich library of photos. If you’re a fan of Bobcat, you’ll enjoy this book.
Our favorite quote came from a short explanation about how the Melroe Manufacturing Company, original builder of the Bobcat, got its street address. When a government agency decided to order some equipment, the procurement officer needed the address of Melroe Manufacturing Company. Problem is, back then, in the graveled-road town of Gwinner, North Dakota, there weren’t any addresses.
“And that’s when Roger pipes up with #1 Plumb Street,” recalled a Melroe old-timer. But no one understood how he’d arrived at the arbitrary address. So the question was put to him.
“Well,” Roger said, “you go a block east, west, north or south, and you’re plumb out of town.” |
The contract price for Clinton on the IEM’s Democratic Nomination Market stood at 9 cents as of 9 a.m. CDT Wednesday, well off the 26 cents she had been trading for at midnight Tuesday and the 22 cents she had been trading for during the day. The price means that IEM investors believe there is only a 9 percent probability that she will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s contract was trading at 87 cents this morning, up from the 74 cents he had been trading at during the day Wednesday. Trading was moderate on the Democratic Nomination Market, with 8,500 contracts trading hands Tuesday.
Food securityWhen food is tight, invest in long-term solutions
An old hand at Ohio State University makes a few points about food availability and price for the long term. Luther Tweeten, professor emeritus of agricultural trade and policy in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, has seen the world struggle through two previous food crises—one in the 1960s, culminating with the famous Green Revolution, and one in the early 1970s, triggered by crop failure and frenzy in international markets. He believes current tight markets may surpass both.
“The previous food crises had obvious transitory elements that triggered them,” said Tweeten. “The underlying elements driving this food crisis may fluctuate, but they are never going to completely go away.”
What won’t be transitory this time, he said, is oil price. And a new ratio of population versus agricultural production will be here to stay.
Tweeten said that the key is long-term sustainability—in its nonpolitical sense— through a developing country’s own economic progress by focusing on six key areas: governance, fiscal responsibility, markets and free trade, infrastructure investments, increased agricultural research and environmental sustainability.
Specifically, Tweeten called for:
• Increase funding for agricultural research. “Agricultural research is terribly under-funded in many parts of the world,” said Tweeten. “For example, the U.S. spends 3 to 4 percent of its agricultural GDP on research. Africa only spends one half of 1 percent of its GDP on agricultural research. If the funds are there and used wisely for research of agricultural technologies, the yields will follow.”
• Open up more global free trade. “Global food production varies only about 1 percent per year, but production in individual countries varies by multiples of world variation. So if every country goes it alone, a food crisis becomes more frequent,” said Tweeten. “But if countries share production through trade, every country can have available food.”
• Research on alternative energy technologies should be subsidized, not the use of those energies themselves. “It is unwise to subsidize and mandate biofuel production at the expense of food production,” said Tweeten. “We are using energy profligately as it is. What we need is to subsidize the research and development of alternative energy technologies.”
• Don’t ignore the benefits of modern technology, such as genetically modified products. “Technology was the basis of the Green Revolution and lifted the world out of a global food crisis,” said Tweeten. “GMOs have vast potential. It would be an incredible mistake to shut them out.
100 years of Today’s Farmer—A plan for the bombThe Cold War brought some unappealing scenarios
Editor’s note: 2008 marks 100 years of publishing for Today’s Farmer. We pull this material from our archives to celebrate our history and offer some perspective on what farm reporters have brought to these pages in the past century.
Back in 1957 the USDA figured a city’s warehoused inventory of food turned over about 26 times a year. In the case of a city the size of St. Louis, that inventory was in the millions of pounds for every category of food. So what did government planners think agriculture could offer in the face of a nuclear attack? One solution was to move the people to the food.
Here’s how Today’s Farmer reported it in 1957:
"The St. Louis Evacuation Area Survival Planning Committee is presently engaged in a study to determine a survival plan for the people of St. Louis in the event of an enemy attack. John Carter, project manager of the committee in a recent letter to this writer stated: “We are not planning on shipping foods into our metropolitan areas after an attack. We are assuming that there would be no St. Louis metropolitan area to ship into. We are trying to figure out how to move almost 2 million people out in time, and how to take care of them after they have been relocated.”
Our correspondent then considered what that might mean in the country, listing off a catalog of trouble for the locals. The grocery stores, bakeries, milk plants, food warehouses and meat packing plants in outlying communities would collapse under the sudden demand.
Under the Strategic and Critical Material Stock Piling Act, passed by the 79th Congress in 1946, a large of amount of materials has been stockpiled. As of June 30, 1956, inventories totaling about 24 million tons and valued at $6 billion were stored at 242 locations. Included were such items as zinc, tin, rubber, silk, manganese, castor oil, aluminum, lead and countless other strategic items. But in case of an atomic or hydrogen attack, there might be little opportunity to utilize many of these materials. However, food would be needed and yet there has been practically no provision for stockpiling it for an emergency, not even milk for our children.
If city people were to be put in the country, our correspondent reckoned, the government ought to be storing food supplies in rural areas, because farm families “certainly cannot be expected to assume the responsibility of providing for the great numbers of persons who would be moved out of cities.
Though most of the grain terminals and flour milling facilities are located in major target areas, Civil Defense officials believe enough would be left to handle grain from on-the-farm storage and rural elevators, if transportation were available. In addition, flour can be safely stored under proper precautions. Canned meats are not difficult to store.
Inasmuch as our whole pattern for food movement is designed with the cities as the principal destination, the nation might well give prompt and careful consideration to enacting “food bank” legislation. Many foods can be stored safely for long periods of time in rural areas where it would be needed in an emergency. This is a way our abundance could make a major contribution to our national security.
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