New NEC-63 Site

Information from Past NEC-63 Meetings

Next Meeting

NEC-63 Business Meeting
Washington, D.C.
March 23, 2001

Harry Kaiser reported that the NEC-63 balance as of before the Washington conference was $10,240. There will probably be a slight deficit for the Washington conference.

Harry Kaiser gave a brief report on NICPRE activities. The NICPRE Advisory Committee met the day before the NEC-63 conference and had an excellent meeting. Kaiser reported that funding was approved for the next fiscal year, but at a slightly lower level. RFPs for the forthcoming fiscal year will be circulated by the end of March 2001. Kaiser reported that the Advisory Committee recommended that special attention be given to the following research areas in the RFP:

• how does generic advertising impact the market demand curve?
• impact and interaction of GMO and other biotechnology backlash and domestic and export commodity promotion.
• impact of generic promotion effectiveness in increasingly product-differentiated markets.
• distributional impacts of commodity promotion.
• strategic behavior of commodity promotion in evolving market structure.
• evaluation of non-price, non-advertising promotion.
• what are the main determinants of farmers'/growers' perceptions about checkoff programs?

Dan Rossi, Administrative Advisor to NEC-63, gave a project status report. Rossi announced that a three page proposal will be due this year to renew NEC-63.

Walt Armbruster discussed the proceedings regarding the spring 2001 meeting. Armbruster stated that no proceeding would be issued for this meeting. However, executive summaries of the papers would be placed on the web page.

Plans for the fall 2001 meetings were discussed. Kinnucan announced that NEC-63 would be meeting in Mesa, Arizona on October 15-16. This will be a joint meetings between NEC-63 and the Food Distribution Research Society with the theme "Know Thy Customer."

A discussion ensued about future topics, and two were identified. The Spring 2002 meeting will have the theme "Allocation Issues in Checkoff Programs." Cynda Clary and Archie MacDonald agreed to serve on the planning committee for this conference, with a tentative site of New Mexico.

The tentative topic for the fall 2002 conference is "Welfare Issues from Checkoff Programs." Harry Kaiser agreed to chair the planning committee for this, and Julian Alston volunteered to be on the committee.

Respectfully submitted,

Harry M. Kaiser
Secretary-Treasurer, NEC-63