Midwest Agriculture Conference Closing Remarks Transcript

LESLIE MCGRANAHAN: Yeah, thanks, David. And as David said, I'm Lesley McGranahan. I am the director of Regional Research and Engagement at the Chicago Fed. And I get to close out today's program. First, I just wanted to thank my colleagues at the Chicago Fed who have helped put together and supported this excellent program. First, David Opdahl, who spearheads our agricultural work.

[APPLAUSE]

And just year after year has a remarkable ability to create the environment for timely conversations in, really, the most important issues impacting the agricultural sector. Elizabeth Koebner, who serves as a thought partner on that work. I also want to thank our fabulous Events Team and Hospitality Team, including Laura and Shelby, Peter Andreadis, Lisa Hardesty, and Darnell Williams, who have been making sure that things go smoothly both for our in-person and our online audience.

[APPLAUSE]

I also just want to shout out to our Public Affairs staff who helped get the word out to our in-person and remote audience and were central to pulling in our fabulous keynote lunch conversation. In addition, I wanted to thank all of our panelists for joining us today to come inform us about Midwest agriculture and the trade environment.

And I wrote down, for me, some of the themes that emerged from today's conversation. And I kept changing what those themes were as the day went on in my head. But one of them is just, first off, it's just that the context of the profitability challenges in agriculture at this moment are really essential to discussing the trade environment so that everything is a function of the context that just continually gets set out of the low output costs and high input costs, low output prices and high input costs, and that the trade is just one source of uncertainty. There's also other sources of uncertainty throughout the AG economy, whether that's infrastructure, weather, disease, geopolitical risk, just this notion that a lot of things are in the wrong place.

The second thing that, as an economist, I found really interesting is just the nature of gains from trade. So you think about efficiency and comparative advantage of being, really, the underlying narrative of gains from trade. My trade is so good. And then, you think about the agricultural environment, which puts in another set of factors, whether that's the seasonality and perishability of the products, but also, the cultural nature of food and the notion that the chicken feet are going to a different place than the chicken, other parts of the chicken. So I thought that was an interesting-- the trade in AG has these unique facets that are maybe not comparable or seen in some other traded goods.

The third thing that I thought about was the heterogeneity in the nature of output. So whether that's across products or locations, it's corn versus soybeans. But I also took away just the notion that North Dakota soybeans have a different output market is really quite telling relative to the soybeans from our district and how that plays out as well. So those are just a whole set of things that came together in my head as I'm closing out the day.

So with that, I'm sure everybody has their own takeaways and really appreciate you all being here. So I want to thank our audience, both here in Chicago and remotely, for joining us. I hope that you enjoy today's program and will continue to engage with us and helping us at the Chicago Fed stay informed about what's going on with Midwest agriculture. So with that, closing us out, and thanks, everyone, for joining us.

[APPLAUSE]