Journal Issue:
Agricultural Policy Review: Volume 2023, Issue 2
Agricultural Policy Review: Volume 2023, Issue 2
Volume
Number
Spring 2023
Issue Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Journal Volume
Journal Volume
Articles
Publication
Multi-plant Coordination in the Beef Packing Industry: Why it Matters, and What Questions Remain?
(
2023)
The spread between fed cattle prices and wholesale beef values made headlines when it widened dramatically, albeit temporarily, following the August 2019 fire at the packing plant near Holcomb, Kansas, and again in 2020 due to packing plant disruptions in the wake of COVID-19 (Lusk et al. 2021; USDA-AMS 2020). Though seemingly paradoxical, these divergent price movements had a straightforward economic explanation and were consistent with perfect competition in the marketplace (Lusk et al. 2021; Azzam and Dhoubhadel 2022).
Publication
Property Taxes and Housing Prices in Urban and Rural Markets
(
2023)
Housing wealth represents about half of the wealth held by US households (Iacoviello 2011) and is the primary asset for most households. Housing represents 80% of the wealth for the bottom half of the wealth distribution, two-thirds of the wealth for households between 50%–90% of the wealth distribution, but only a small fraction of the wealth of the top 10% of households (Kuhn et al. 2020). Consequently, households at the bottom of the wealth distribution are much more exposed to changes in housing values. During the run-up in housing values between 1971–2007, wealth rose fastest for the bottom half of the wealth distribution. While all assets fell in value during the Great Recession, the slow recovery of housing prices compared to stock prices contributed to rising wealth inequality in the United States.
Publication
The Continuing Evolution of Iowa Farmland Ownership and Tenure: Results from the 2022 Survey
(
2023)
The Iowa Farmland Ownership and Tenure Survey is based on a random sample of 40-acre tracts of farmland, which have been chosen as statistically representative of all farmland and all landowners in Iowa. We interviewed landowners of these tracts via telephone and asked questions that ranged from demographic and financial information to ownership structure and farming/conservation practices. The results from the current survey are statistically representative of all farmland and all landowners in Iowa as of July 1, 2022. The following tables provide a brief snapshot of results from the 2022 survey and compare current results to those from previous surveys. The full results from the 2022 Iowa Farmland Ownership and Tenure Survey has been published as a CARD working paper at go.iastate.edu/E49TFI.
Publication
New Survey Targeting Underrepresented Iowans Reveals Limited Usage of Lake Resources
(
2023)
A large region of low-to-no-oxygen zone—a hypoxic zone—forms every summer over the past three decades in the Gulf of Mexico, largely due to excessive nutrient runoff from states located within the upper Mississippi River Basin, including Iowa (Scavia et al. 2017; Rabalais and Turner 2019; Bianchi et al. 2010; Jones et al. 2018). Moreover, the excessive nutrients in local rivers and lakes results in the deterioration of water quality conditions within Iowa's water bodies. One of the emerging concerns pertains to the occurrence of harmful algal blooms (HABs), which pose health risks to individuals engaged in recreational activities within water bodies. Over the past two decades, the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development has undertaken numerous household surveys, funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR), with the aim of understanding the utilization of in-state lake recreational resources by Iowans, as well as the impact of water quality conditions on respondents’ choices of recreational destinations. Building upon the support provided by the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Center and the United States Geological Survey (USGS), we conducted a survey specifically designed to enhance our comprehension of lake recreation usage among households from underrepresented communities that were previously overlooked in earlier surveys.