AARES News and Views
 

Newsletter of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc.

Volume 15, Number 1, April 2003

Contents

President’s Column: Bill Malcolm

Reports to the 2003 Annual General Meeting
    President’s Report – Ron Duncan
    Secretary’s Report – Liz Petersen
    Treasurer’s Report – Mal Wegener
    AJARE Editors’ Report – Chris O’Donnell and John Mullen
    Manager – Promotion and Development’s Report – Lisa Brennan

AARES Annual Symposium 2003 – Market-based tools for environmental management

Noticeboard

AARES 2003 47th Annual Conference

Contact Details for Office Bearers and Central Office

Deadline and Advertising

Editor: Tracy Henderson, Sugar Research and Development Corporation, thenderson@srdc.gov.au
Note: click on logo at the start of each section to jump to next section.

AARES News and Views

PRESIDENT'S COLUMN: Bill Malcolm

It seems unanimous that the Freemantle Annual Conference was a fantastic experience - another case of what happens when you put over-achieving Western Australians in charge. Superb place, excellent organization, terrific company, and first class papers as well. The appreciation of the AARES membership to the WA branch and the Local Organising Committee (LOC) for the Conference is manifold.

The contribution of Ron Duncan as 2002 President is widely recognized by a grateful membership, and Julian Alston's time on Council as Pre-President, President, and Post-President has been served. Grand contributions both, and thanks.

The incoming Council met at the finish of the conference. Among other things, the Council noted:

·        the AARES has cash reserves of $165,000

·        the past couple of conferences have been well sponsored, and thus have made decent surpluses

·        membership fees and institutional subscriptions cover around half of the society's annual operating costs (including payments to branches), and thus we rely on cash surpluses from the Conference and the Annual Symposium to meet annual operating costs

·        The Manager Promotion and Development, Lisa Brennan, will focus on the increasingly important role of raising sponsorships for our main events, and some of the other tasks of the current role of the Manager Promotion and Development duties are likely to be seperated

·        AARES has a major commitment on which to deliver: the 2006 International Agricultural Economics Association Conference, in Brisbane. The 2006 Annual AARES Conference is also the 50^th AAES/AARES annual conference, and will be held in conjunction with the international conference.

A two day Annual Symposium on Market Based Tools for Environmental Management will be held in Canberra in September.

A potential future development the Society might investigate; namely, transforming all the past editions of the AJAE/AJARE and the RMAE into electronic format, was also raised at Council. The costs of doing this are going to be explored. Members of the executive would be interested to hear from members about whether they think this might be a good suggestion or not, and about perceived benefits of having past copies of the journals available in electronic form.

The call for the next team of editors for the Journal has gone out. AARES members are urged to give some serious consideration to forming a team and having a go at this task. It is a professionally rewarding activity and a terrific contribution to the profession.

A warm welcome is extended to Jeff Bennett as AARES President Elect. Jeff has the pleasant creative challenge of putting together the program for the 2004 Annual Conference in Melbourne - a top choice for making such choices. Similarly, Mark Eigenraam is Chair of the LOC. It will all be happening in Melbourne next summer.

The University of Sydney, Faculty of Rural Management, Orange Campus has initiated a proposal for a group of people representing a wide range of farm management related skills and interests to form a national 'Farm Business Management Network' to further the interests and development of the farm management profession in Australia.

The survey of AARES members interests revealed one third of members were interested in farm management economics. As well, a reasonable quantity of work presented nowadays at AARES conferences is in the field of applied farm management economics - applied both on farm and at private-public resource management boundaries.

It is likely that following discussions AARES will opt to be involved in some way with this Network - not least to ensure that the core discipline of farm business management, economics, is fully and properly represented. Though oft-times it seems that in questions about resource use, whether private or public, everything is important except economics. as Jack Makeham always argued, following Earl Heady and John Dillon, 'economics is not an optional extra!

Nil Desperandum

Bill Malcolm

AARES News and Views

REPORTS TO THE 2003 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 13TH FEBRUARY 2003, FREMANTLE WA

President’s Report

By Ron Duncan

I am pleased that I can report to you that the Society is in a strong position, both financially and in terms of membership numbers, as well as in terms of its professional activities.  This robust position is the outcome of the innovativeness and hard work of the past several Councils.  As you will hear in the reports from Council members, we have been able to increase the funds held in reserve, membership numbers are doing well in most branches, the Journal’s pipeline is in good shape, and the Society’s communications arrangements and outreach are improving, as reflected for example in the continued development of the website.

The Society continues to showcase the high quality and topical work of its members in various ways.  For example, the Annual Symposium has raised the public profile of the profession significantly through the discussion of topical issues, and has become a very effective way of increasing membership.  The 2003 Symposium looks to be another highly relevant and very successful event.  The Society is indebted to the initiators of this event and to all those who help to put them on.

The arrangements with the Australian Agribusiness Association have progressed very well and have been formalised this year with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two associations that encourages various kinds of collaboration.  The joint publication, Connections, seems to have been successful so far, encouraging the Council to continue the contribution of $5,000 to this year’s publications.

We have mourned the passing of three outstanding members of the Society, John Dillon, Ross Parish and John Quilkey.  They made lasting contributions in terms of their activities in the Society, their research, and their training of generations of members of the profession.  It is fitting that the Society honours their contributions and the contributions of other giants of the profession.  To that end the Council decided that this Conference would be the final year of the Alan Lloyd Fellowship and that a fund would be set up so that each Annual Conference would honour in a similar manner one of our distinguished fellows.

A challenge for incoming Council and the next will be to ensure that appropriate arrangements are made for the 2006 IAAE meeting to be held in Brisbane.  In particular, there is the question of what joint arrangements should be made between AARES and the IAAE Conference.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the members of Council for their contributions to the Society and for making my job such an enjoyable and fulfilling one.  I also thank again the 2003 Local Organising Committee for making this Conference so interesting and enjoyable.

I wish the incoming President and Council a very successful year.

Secretary’s Report

By Liz Petersen

Activities of the Society during 2002

1. Council of the Society

The 2002 Annual General Meeting was held on 14 February 2002 at the Rydges Hotel Lakeside, Canberra.  At the meeting, the following office bearers were elected:

Julian Alston automatically assumed membership of Council on becoming Immediate Past President. David Feldman attended Council meetings in 2002 as Chair of the Local Organising Committee for the 2003 conference. The Editors of The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics are John Mullen and Chris O’Donnell – Chris O’Donnell is a member of the Council. Tracy Henderson is Editor of News and Views but is not a member of Council.

During 2002, the following members represented their Branches at Council meetings:

2. Business of Council

Council met four times since the last AGM: 15 February 2002, 31 May 2002, 18 September 2002 and 11 February 2003.

Some of the more important matters considered by Council in 2002 were: 

• The conference held in Canberra and the upcoming conference in Fremantle
• The Annual Symposium held in Armidale on 19 September 2002 and the upcoming Annual Symposium to be held in Canberra on 2-3 September 2003
• Progress with AJARE and Connections
• The memorandum of understanding between the Australian Agribusiness Association and the AARES
• The 2006 Annual Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists to be held in Brisbane
• The Young Professionals Exchange Travel Award

Financial management of the Society

3. Committees

The following members were appointed to committees of the Society in 2002:

4. Branch Activities

Branch office bearers listed are those as at 31 December 2002.

Australian Capital Territory

President: Martin van Bueren

Secretary: Deborah Templeton

Treasurer: Michael Potter

Councillor: Paul Morris

Meetings held since 2002 AGM

Other branch activities:

• Hosted the 46^th Annual AARES Conference, Canberra, 13-15 February 2002

• Produced a promotional post-card for the ACT Branch

New England

President: Bob Farquharson

Treasurer: Gary Griffith

Secretary: Robyn Hean 

Councillor: Bob Farquharson

The New England Branch didn’t provide a report.

New South Wales

President: Bryony Mika

Treasurer: Zhangyue Zhou

Secretary: Inderpal Singh

Councillor: Jason Crean

Meetings held since 2002 AGM

Queensland

President: Mary-Ann Franco-Dixon

Treasurer: Dinesha Emmery

Secretary: Tracy Henderson

Councillor: George Antony

Meetings held since 2002 AGM

South Australia

President: Thea Mech

Secretary: Jack Langberg

Treasurer: Julian Morison

Councillor: Thea Mech (acting)

Meetings held since 2002 AGM

Victoria

President: Mark Eigenraam

Treasurer: Arthur Ha

Secretary: Charlotte Duke

Victoria has agreed to host the 2004 AARES Conference.

Western Australia

President: Ben White

Treasurer: Michael Burton

Secretary: Tennille Winter

Councillor: Ross Kingwell

Meetings held since 2002 AGM

New Zealand Branch

President: Caroline Saunders

Treasurer: Murray Doak

Secretary: Anita Wreford

Councillor: Frank Scrimgeor

 Meetings held since 2002 AGM

North American Branch

President: Jennifer James

Treasurer/Secretary: Laura McCann

Councillors: Julian Alston, Nick Piggott

 Meetings held since 2002 AGM

The annual branch meeting was held at the American Agricultural Economics Association meetings in Long Beach, CA and consisted of a reception at Shoreline Park.  Sixty-two people attended, 15 people joined the Society, and 6 renewed their memberships at the event.  Liz Petersen, the first winner of the AARES-AAEA Young Professionals “Heading North” Travel Award, was recognized, and the second “Heading South” was awarded to Tom Marsh of Kansas State University who will be attending the meetings in Fremantle.  Nick Piggott coordinated the judging.

A business meeting was held the following day, and the primary topic of discussion was the future of the Young Professionals Travel Awards.  The branch would like to see more applications and encourages less senior faculty members to apply.  We plan to write department heads and Branch officers to advertise the awards. 

An application was submitted to the American Agricultural Economics Foundation for continuation of funding for the new AARES-AAEA Young Professionals awards.  The awards have two components, a “Heading South” award to support a North American’s attendance at the AARES conference, and a “Heading North” award to support an Australian/New Zealander’s attendance at the AAEA conference.  We requested funding for another two years of the program, and have not yet heard the Foundation’s decision.

Dan Phaneuf of North Carolina State, the winner of the first “Heading South” award attended the AARES conference in Canberra.  As mentioned, Liz Petersen, the winner of the first “Heading North” award attended the AAEA conference in Long Beach.  Both rated their trips professionally and personally successful, and personal statements to that effect were published in the News and Views.

5. Prize winners

Undergraduate prize winners:

New England: Stephen Dalton, University of New England

New South Wales: Paul Burke, University of Sydney

Queensland: Jonathon Newby, University of Queensland

ACT: Andrew Hodges, Australian National University

New Zealand: Jenny-Marie Wakelin, Lincoln University

Western Australia: Michael Young, University of Western Australia

South Australia: Julia Tan, University of Adelaide

Victoria: Not prize awarded

Masters Prize winner:

Ben Henderson of the University of Western Australia

The title of his Masters thesis is “Efficiency in Western Australian Broadacre Agriculture: A Comparison between Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Analysis”.

Primary Supervisor: Ross Kingwell

PhD Prize winner:

Graham Marshall of the University of New England

The title of his PhD is “Crafting Cooperation in the Commons: An Economic Analysis of Prospects for Collaborative Environmental Governance”

Primary Supervisor: Brian Dollery

Prize for the Best Article in the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics: Michael Harris and Iain Fraser.

The title of the article is “Natural resource accounting in theory and practice: A critical assessment”

AARES /AAEA Young Professionals Exchange Travel Award - Heading South

Tom Marsh, Kansas State University

AARES /AAEA Young Professionals Exchange Travel Award - Heading North

John Gibson, the University of Waikato

2002 Distinguished Fellows

Jock Anderson

Tony Chisholm

Brian Fisher

Bob Lindner

2002 Distinguished Life Member

There were no nominations for a Distinguished Life Member

Winners of AARES financial support to attend the 2003 Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists

Anita Wreford, Lincoln University

Graham Marshall, The University of New England

Treasurer’s Report

By Malcolm Wegener

Financial position – cheque account

The balance in the Society’s cheque account on 31 December 2002, after reconciliation for unpresented cheques was $21,493.

Financial position – fixed deposits

In 2002, the majority of the Society’s surplus funds were invested in a Commercial Bill with the Commonwealth Bank which matured on 24 January 2003 having accumulated interest of $4 620.  There were sufficient funds in the cheque account after receiving the surplus from the Canberra conference and advance payments on 2002 subscriptions from Blackwell to place another
$50 000 on Fixed Deposit in November.

When these two investments matured, the principal and most of the accumulated interest, making a total of $165 000 were re-invested in a Term Deposit on 3 February 2003 for 100 days at an interest rate of 4.6 percent (to mature on 14 May 2003).

Investment Schedule

An investment of the size that the Society now has represents a prudent approach to financial risk management.  The Society is clearly dependent on the financial surpluses from its annual conference to meet a significant proportion of its operating costs each year since membership fees and institutional subscriptions cover just over half of our annual operating costs.  In the unlikely event of a failed conference, we need to have sufficient funds available to enable the Society to continue operating for at least one year.  The Society has also entered into a number of long-term commitments for which funding needs to be secure.

The healthy financial position of the Society is due largely to the exceptionally big surplus from the Adelaide conference in 2001, the good surplus from the Canberra conference in 2002, and the continuing recruitment of new members into the Society by branches.

Statement of income and expenditure

The Society had another financially successful year in 2002 with an estimated surplus over operating costs of approximately $19 000.  A copy of the statement of income and expenditure for 2002 is presented in the next table.  However, the success was almost totally due to the excellent results from the Canberra conference (with a surplus of nearly $18 000) meaning that the combined effect of the Society’s other activities was to just cover costs.

In spite of our healthy bank balance, the Council has been concerned for some time to strengthen the financial base of the society.  Subscription rates for Australian and New Zealand members were raised for 2003 and the publishing contract with Blackwell was re-negotiated in 2001 to permit AARES to receive a share of the subscription revenue paid by libraries and institutions and to impose page charges on articles accepted for publication in 2002.  These decisions are mostly reflected in the higher amounts budgeted from these sources for 2003.

Subscription rates for Australian and New Zealand members were raised to $90 for 2003 while keeping subscriptions for members in other countries at their existing level in order to partly remove the disparity in real cost of membership between countries due to the exchange rate.

Statement of cash income and expenditure, 2002

Notes and explanations:

1. Interest income was reduced in 2002 by the decision to invest surplus funds in a 12-month Commercial Bill with the Commonwealth Bank which was the highest interest rate offered at the time.

2. Other income includes editorial royalties and sundry items.  Page charges were introduced for articles accepted for publication in AJARE from 2002. Under the re-negotiated agreement with Blackwell, 92% of the revenue from this source will be passed on to the Society.

3. Extraordinary income in 2002 included a late payment of membership subscriptions from Blackwell which was received after the end of 2001 financial year.

4. News and Views was distributed electronically in 2002 at a considerable cost saving to the Society.  Council agreed to continue publication of Connections in 2003.

Statement of Assets and Liabilities

Note: The nominal amount previously included for AJARE and Review stocks has been written off.

Council decided during the past year to re-name the Alan Lloyd Fellowship Fund as the Distinguished Fellows Fund and agreed to replenish the Fund in view of the substantial surpluses made from Annual Conferences and Symposia in the past two years.  An amount of $30 000 of the Society’s funds, currently part of the funds held on Fixed Deposit with the Commonwealth Bank, will be reserved to fund the Distinguished Fellows address at Annual Conferences over the next five years, with the option of continuing the lecture series for a further five years if considered desirable.

Audit

The accounts for the Society for 2002 have been audited by John Johnstone.  His report was received and endorsed by the Council at its meeting on 11 February 2003.   The returns required by the Victorian Corporate Affairs Commission from the Public Officer for the Society were duly submitted during the year.

GST

The Society is registered for Goods and Services Tax and quarterly BAS statements have been submitted regularly since the scheme was introduced.

A significant proportion of the Society’s cash flows, particularly the receipt of subscription income from Blackwell is an international transaction that is not subject to GST.  The following table summarises GST activity for the past year.

 Summary of GST payments for 2002 (cash basis)

Branch grants

A transfer of funds totalling $9 954 was made to branches in December 2002.  Payments are made in proportion to the branches current membership numbers and growth during the year.  Details of membership numbers and branch payments are provided in the following table.

The standard practice is for branches to receive a base grant of $300 in addition to $7.50 per ordinary member or equivalent plus a $24 bonus for each new member recruited during the year.  The Victorian Branch had the highest number of new members due to the successful Symposium held in Melbourne in October 2001.  A share of the surplus from the Canberra Annual Conference is due to the ACT Branch.  The ACT, NSW and North American Branches all recruited substantial numbers of new members during the year.  While 128 new members were added to the membership list during 2002, the total number of members at the end of the year was only a little higher than for the previous year.  This turnover in membership represents a problem that the Society needs to address.

Branch membership and branch grants, 1999 – 2002

Collaborations

The Society has agreed to continue joint publication of the electronic journal Connections with the Agribusiness Association of Australia for another year at a cost of $5 000 and held discussions with AAA about the possibility of other joint activities.

The editorial office for AJARE continues to be located at the University of New England while Blackwell Publishing maintain the membership directory and undertake printing and distribution of the Journal.  Blackwell did indicate their intention to relocate management of the Journal to their Melbourne office in 2002 but this was deferred.  The shift when it occurs will have GST implications for membership subscriptions since the notices are currently issued from Blackwell’s Oxford UK office and are regarded as international payments for GST purposes.

Outlook for 2003

Continuation of the Society’s activities remains dependent on the successful financial outcomes from conferences and symposia despite recent steps by the Council to strengthen other sources of revenue such as a share of the subscription income from the Journal and setting page charges on published articles.

The results for the 2003 conference seem assured and plans for the symposium on “Market-based instruments for natural resource management” to be held in Canberra later this year are well in hand.  The Council is aware of the responsibility delegated to local organising committees to organise and manage these events profitably and is moving to formalise agreements for these activities so that everyone is clear where responsibility lies for financial and other matters.  One of the key issues concerns sponsorship for these events which, if available, facilitates successful events by including international speakers as part of the program and permits a lower registration fee to be charged for both members and non-members than would otherwise be the case.  Members of local organising committees usually have close professional relationships with potential sponsors who we expect will continue to contribute an increasing proportion of the funding needed to support the Society’s activities and help it deliver on the “public good” aspects of its charter.

Editors’ Report

By Chris O'Donnell and John Mullen

vvvv

This report covers the twelve month period to 31 December 2002.

1. Statistics. Summary statistics on numbers of pages and articles printed, papers received, decisions taken, papers under review and the ranking of the Journal are provided in the table overleaf.  Highlights include:
   • An increase in the number of new submissions in 2002, partly due to increased efforts by the publishers and editors to solicit papers from relevant symposia and conferences.
   • An improvement in the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) ranking of the Journal from 99/166 in 2000 to 79/160 in 2001 (2002 rankings will not be available until June).
   • An acceptance rate for new papers that continues to hover just below 30%.
2. Publishing. All issues in the 2002 volume were published on schedule.  Proofs for the March 2003 issue are still with authors and the Blackwells Production Editor, Elissa Wilson.  All but two papers for the June 2003 issue have been submitted to the publishers.
3. Supply of Manuscripts. We have not yet been in a position where we have had to defer a paper because of space constraints, and there are currently no papers available for despatch to the publishers for publication in the September issue.  Fortunately, there are a reasonably large number of papers currently under review.
4. Editorial Board.  Members of the Editorial Board serve to enhance the status of the Journal and generally contribute to maintaining the quality of our Journal as an outlet for applied economics research related to agriculture and the management of natural resources. We sometimes ask Board members to referee papers, and we occasionally ask them to adjudicate when referees hold contrary views about the merits of a paper.  It is AJARE policy to change three members of the Editorial Board each year (usually the longest serving members).  There have been no changes to the composition of the Board for two years, so this year we changed seven members of the Board.  New Board members in 2003 include David Pannell, Deborah Peterson, Donna Brennan, Kerry Smith, Grant Scobie, Yiping Huang and Phil Pardey.  These new members replace Colin Brown, Brian Fisher, Yujiro Hayami, Allan Rae, Alan Randall, Carolyn Tanner and Brian Wright.  We are extremely grateful for the service these latter Board members have provided to the Journal over many years, and the prestige they brought to the Journal as members of the Board.

Finally, we would like to thank the Associate Editors (Jeff Bennett from ANU, Ray Trewin from ACIAR, Garry Griffith from NSW Agriculture and Paul Winters from the Inter-America Development Bank), the Book Review Editor (Graham Marshall from UNE), authors and reviewers for their contributions to AJARE over the last twelve months.  Special thanks also go to Honey Greenwood in the AJARE/AARES office.

Chris O'Donnell, University of Queensland

John Mullen, NSW Agriculture

Co-Editors, AJARE

Summary Information 1999-2002