The harvest season, accompanied by the humming of combines and the bright colors of autumn, now reigns over the midwestern plains. Hot and dry August weather has somewhat hampered progress and has led to a delayed harvest, which continues to stay a couple weeks behind schedule. While foreign demand may be influenced by the fluctuations in the U.S. dollar and increased shipping costs, domestic demand may expand because the major bulk of grain is used as livestock feed, and livestock numbers are on the rise. On the livestock side, data indicates that the national beef cow herd remains stable while pork inventories appear to be more than usually depleted as compared to this time last year, which may translate into higher livestock prices this fall.

The recent European Union (EU) draft legislation on labeling and tracing all food and feed consisting of, containing, or produced from genetically modified (GM) organisms has the potential to significantly affect long-run U.S. agricultural exports to Europe. For the last three years, a de facto moratorium has halted approval of new GM varieties in the EU. Whereas the proposed new EU legislation may help resolve this impasse, the details of this draft legislation are raising considerable concern in the U.S. agricultural community and, if approved, are likely to give rise to a serious trade dispute within the World Trade Organization.

U.S. agricultural subsidies are easy to criticize because they are far from uniformly distributed. Subsidies are concentrated geographically, they are concentrated on relatively few crops, and they are concentrated on relatively few producers. The accompanying three charts illustrate these three dimensions of concentration.

Behind all good policy analysis is good economic theory, backed by mathematical programming models that often use massive data and crunch massive numbers. And behind all good programming and data systems is a good computer system, backed by professionals who know how to keep things humming. Michael Long belongs to this club of computer professionals at CARD; he’s been working to maintain CARD’s computers, servers, and networks since 1990.