Researchers from the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University will be presented with three awards from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

Edward Balistreri, Chad Hart, Dermot Hayes, Minghao Li, Lee Schulz, Wendong Zhang, and John Crespi, along with David Swenson of the Department of Economics at Iowa State University, will be presented with the prestigious Bruce Gardner Memorial Prize for Applied Policy Analysis Award. The AAEA presents the Bruce Gardner prize as recognition for “outstanding impact on agricultural and related policy.”

Balistreri et al. are receiving recognition for their work on the CARD Policy Brief “The Impact of the 2018 Trade Disruptions on the Iowa Economy,” which examines the effects of recent trade disruptions on Iowa’s economy and finds overall losses in Iowa’s Gross State Product from $1 to $2 billion.

Keri Jacobs, along with Brian Briggeman at Kansas State University, Phil Kenkel at Oklahoma State University, and Greg McKee at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, will receive AAEA’s Distinguished Extension Program Group Award. The Distinguished Extension Program Group Award recognizes excellence in extension economics education programs for a group of researchers.

Jacobs et al. were nominated for their work researching and developing educational materials about the implications of recent tax reforms for agricultural cooperatives. “In a short amount of time, the nominees built a research-based extension program to handle a current topic of great interest to farmers, ranchers, and producers. As a result of their efforts, cooperative management, boards, and producers were able to ascertain the important and relevant changes and begin planning to adjust to these changes during the 2018 production year,” Allen Featherstone, professor of economics at Kansas State University said in his nomination letter.

Alejandro Plastina will receive AAEA’s Distinguished Extension Program Individual: Less Than 10 Years Award. The Distinguished Extension/Outreach Program Awards recognize achievement of excellence in extension economics education programs for an individual with less than 10 years’ experience.

Plastina was nominated for his extension and research program focusing on the economics of agricultural production and technology. Specifically, his programs focus on farm profitability, Farm Bill programs, farm leasing arrangement, and risk management through crop insurance. Plastina’s work has resulted in two decision tools for assessing net returns to cover crops, 11 decision tools to analyze Farm Bill programs, 195 extension and press articles, and 113 presentations.

All recipients will receive their awards at the 2019 AAEA Annual Meeting, which will be held July 21–23 in Atlanta, GA.