Setting Cash Rents and Variability in Returns
Returns to farmland likely will vary considerably over the next several years. This variability will make it difficult to set a cash rent that can remain the same for several years. Prices projected for 2015 are lower than likely long-run prices. As a result, cash rents based on 2015 returns may have to be raised in the future. Similarly, rents may need to be lowered if those cash rents were set based on returns in 2010 through 2013, particularly given that prices in 2010 through 2013 were above likely long-run average prices.
Forecasts of 2015 Market Year Average Prices based on Projected Prices for Crop Insurance
The 2015 market year average (MYA) prices for corn and soybeans are forecasts using the same futures contract prices as are used to set projected prices on crop insurance products. Prices during the first two week of February indicate projected prices of $4.15 per bushel for corn and $9.60 per bushel for soybeans. Resulting forecasts of 2015 MYA prices are $3.97 per bushel for corn and $9.84 per bushel for soybeans. Given these forecasts, Agricultural Risk Coverage – County Option (ARC-CO) is projected to pay more than Price Loss Coverage (PLC) over many counties in 2015.
Working Knowledge: Employee Innovation and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1930
This book presents the legal and business history of corporate ownership of employee knowledge. Skilled workers of the early nineteenth century enjoyed a degree of professional independence because workplace knowledge and technical skill were their 'property,' or at least their attribute. In most sectors of today's economy, however, it is a foundational and widely accepted truth that businesses retain legal ownership of employee-generated intellectual property. In "Working Knowledge", Catherine Fisk chronicles the legal and social transformations that led to the transfer of ownership of employee innovation from labor to management. This deeply contested development was won at the expense of workers' entrepreneurial independence and ultimately, Fisk argues, economic democracy. By reviewing judicial decisions and legal scholarship on all aspects of employee-generated intellectual property and combing the archives of major nineteenth-century intellectual property - producing companies - including DuPont, Rand McNally, and the American Tobacco Company - Fisk makes a highly technical area of law accessible to general readers while also addressing scholarly deficiencies in the histories of labor, intellectual property, and the business of technology.