During most weeks, the AgEconMT crew reads a lot of news, interacts with lots of people, and learns a lot. While we’re not able to report on and provide analyses on all of those things, we want to share at least a few items that we found to be particularly interesting and useful for the northern Great Plains agricultural sector during the past week.
Six maps that show the anatomy of America’s infrastructure (Washington Post): “President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to invest about $550 billion in new infrastructure projects across the country was a central theme in his campaign. The maps you are about to see show the massive scope of America’s infrastructure [and] provide a glimpse into where that half-trillion dollars may be invested.”
U.S. Agricultural Exports, FY 2016 (USDA Foreign Agricultural Service): The total value of U.S. agricultural exports in fiscal year 2016 was $129.7 billion, exceeding USDA forecasts. Of those, 29.3% of value exported was to NAFTA nations and 14.8% of value exported was to China.
The Cost of a GMO-Free Market Basket of Food in the United States (AgBioForum): “We examine the consumer cost consequences of choosing GMO-free food over food that contains GMOs. Using text-mining algorithms applied to detailed product descriptions contained in a proprietary database of individual GMO and GMO-free foods at the retail level, we find that, when directly compared item by item, GMO-free food costs an average of 33% more than a comparable food item that is not GMO-free. When compared on a per-ounce basis, GMO-free foods cost an average of 73% more. Generalizing to the cost of a typical market basket of food consumed by American households, GMO-free food consumption would increase the average family food budget from $9,462 to $12,181 per year.”
Terry Branstad, Iowa Governor, Is Trump’s Pick as China Ambassador (NY Times): “’It’s a good pick because he knows President Xi, he can represent the heartland of the United States, which I think is very positive, and the fact that President Xi has been in his state twice is a very positive thing,’ Mr. Hormats said Wednesday in China. ‘It creates a personal relationship that is very hard to replicate.’”
Notice anything we’ve missed and that could be interesting to others like you? Let us know and we’ll add it!
(Photo by NS Newsflash is licensed under CC BY 4.0)
