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CARD: Center for Agricultural and Rural Development

Fall 2004, Vol. 10 No. 4

pdf for printing 10 Years of the Iowa Ag Review

In his introduction of the inaugural issue of the Iowa Ag Review in December 1994, former editor John Kruse listed the quarterly publication's goals:
  • to communicate the findings of analyses, completed or underway, of proposed farm policy changes;

  • to provide objective discussion of the issues and analytical results; and

  • to summarize the current situation for Iowa agriculture and the potential impacts of international developments.
The Iowa Ag Review sprung from the creation of a new Iowa model in the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) baseline analysis of commodities. As a result, the comprehensive analysis provided by FAPRI to farmers, agri-businesses, legislators, and other stakeholders in agriculture could be focused on the implications for Iowa. Naturally, researchers at FAPRI and CARD wanted a vehicle for sharing this information.
The inaugural issue of the Iowa Ag Review contained stories on the implications of the GATT agreement, the near-term outlook for the pork sector, implications of the 1995 farm bill, and how record yields were shaping up for Iowa and U.S. corn and soybeans.
Looking at the table of contents for this quarter's issue, some stories mirror those of 10 years ago. We are again looking at record yields in commodities and the effect on prices. We continue to explore the playing field for agriculture in the context of GATT's successor--the WTO. And we discuss the outlook for the pork sector in a year that saw tremendous growth in exports.
As we start our second decade of publication, we reaffirm the objectives given in the inaugural Iowa Ag Review to bring timely, objective analysis of the most challenging agricultural questions and policies of the quarter, year, and decade ahead. ?