New Publication From the Agricultural and Applied Economics Department

You've reached the Virginia Cooperative Extension Newsletter Archive. These files cover more than ten years of newsletters posted on our old website (through April/May 2009), and are provided for historical purposes only. As such, they may contain out-of-date references and broken links.

To see our latest newsletters and current information, visit our website at http://www.ext.vt.edu/news/.

Newsletter Archive index: http://sites.ext.vt.edu/newsletter-archive/

On the REAP website (http://www.reap.vt.edu) are three new REAP Reports and one new REAP Policy Paper: Price Risk Management in December Corn Futures by Wayne Purcell; Price Risk Management in July Wheat Futures by Wayne Purcell; Paying for Schooling in Rural Virginia by George McDowell and Karen Mundy; and Policy Paper, The Institutional Needs for Rural Development in Virginia by George McDowell is also available.

The Price Risk Management reports by Wayne Purcell target those producers and processors already using the futures market to help control price risk. In these reports, Purcell describes the problems with technical chart analysis using trend lines. He then discusses how various moving averages perform.

Paying for Schooling in Rural Virginia is an expansion of the November/December 2001 Horizons, "The Story of Rural Schooling in Virginia."

George McDowell's Policy Paper, The Institutional Needs for Rural Development in Virginia, describes the need for three institutions in Virginia to deal with the problems of rural people and rural communities. These institutions are a Center that provides a voice for rural people and communities and facilitates and coordinates research and educational outreach. A policy analysis institute at a research university and an educational outreach and intervention program housed at a research university complete the institutions needed. McDowell argues that each of these institutions has a unique role that the others cannot play and that the policy analysis and educational outreach cannot be done without the support of an entire cadre of campus faculty and graduate students and local educators associated with the research university. Market forces will not correct the problems of rural people and rural areas nor is a silver bullet available. Each community must find its own solutions with the help of the Center, policy analysis institution, and educational outreach and intervention program.

Inconvenience: We regret that only Horizons will continue to be printed and mailed. Due to state budget cuts we cannot continue to print and distribute copies of other REAP publications. If you are unable to print the publication you need, please contact the REAP office by phone: (540) 231-9443; by email: reap01@vt.edu; or on the web at http://www.reap.vt.edu, and we will send you a hard copy.