Coronavirus and Ag

There are many factors that influence consumers’ food purchasing decisions – taste, price, appearance, environmental impact, etc. Researchers and marketers alike are interested in the weight consumers place on these different factors, also referred to as “food values”. While research has shown food values to be relatively stable over time (Lusk, 2018), the Covid-19 pandemic has upended all that is normal. Given sustained high unemployment rates (BLS, 2021) and changes in food acquisition options and behaviors (Ellison et al., 2020; Ellison and Ocepek, 2020), it is possible that consumers’ food values have also shifted. In this post, we discuss which food values consumers have traditionally regarded as important and investigate to what extent food values have changed during the Covid-19 pandemic using results from a national survey.

On December 27, 2020, the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) of 2021 was signed into law. There were many items in this legislation that affected farmers. There were changes to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) advance grants, and Employee Retention Credit (ERC), as well as, additions or extensions to other Farm Service Agency (FSA) programs. We will give an overview of the changes to the first three items in this article. For all of these programs, we are only explaining the new changes or additions. The original rules for PPP loans, EIDL Advances and ERC still apply that were not explicitly changed in CAA 2021.

This year agritourism looks more different than ever before. Apple picking in a mask. Pumpkin patches with one-way signs. Pick up produce boxes instead of browsing at the farmers’ market. Socially distanced wine tastings. All across the state, Illinois agritourism operations have worked to make adjustments to their businesses to comply with public health guidelines and regulations to ensure they can keep their business open while also keeping their employees and customers safe. In this post, we explore how these operations are coping during Covid-19. More specifically, we conducted a survey of regional agritourism operations and reviewed websites for agritourism operations in Illinois to better understand what policies have been implemented and the financial impact of the pandemic on local agritourism.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many of consumers’ everyday behaviors, including how they get food. The extent to which an individual’s behavior changes is likely dependent on many factors. In this article, we’ll explore how geographic region and political affiliation may be associated with differences in food acquisition behaviors.

It is widely acknowledged that the U.S. ethanol industry has been negatively impacted by the COVID pandemic.  The plight of ethanol producers has prompted calls for financial relief from the…

As set-asides are discussed as a farm policy alternative, the changing global nature of agricultural production needs to be considered. As world production of corn and soybeans has increased significantly in the past 30 years, the U.S. has lost production and export share. South America, mainly Brazil, is now a major competitor of the U.S., particularly in soybeans, but increasingly with respect to corn as well. The concern is that removing U.S. acres may encourage production in the rest of the world, with Brazil being the most likely leading country with acreage increase, reducing any positive price effect from the U.S. set asides and further leading to additional loss of market share for U.S. farmers.