By MATTHEW WEAVER

Capital Press

Randy Fortenbery is the new professor of small grains economics at Washington State University's School of Economic Sciences. He began in July.

Fortenbery introduced himself to the Washington Grain Commission during its meeting in Spokane. The commission provided a one-time $2 million endowment for the position.

"Everything comes down to dollars and cents," said Tom Mick, CEO of the grain commission. "We need an economist to cover a broad range of topics for us and give us a quick analysis of what is going to be the impact on Washington grain producers."

The industry is often in a mode where it must react to different situations, such as farm bill provisions, new government regulations or marketing factors, Mick said.

"In this day and age, we definitely need an economic analysis of what people are discussing or what our legislators are going to try to impose on us," he said.

Fortenbery said he considers it his job to look at issues related to the economics of the Washington small grains sector, including pulses. That includes market structure issues, production, technology adaptation and what's happening internationally that would affect Washington farmers.

He intends to offer presentations and executive management programs on key topics to producers and others.

Fortenbery previously worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a joint appointment between the Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics and the School of Business.

He grew up in Montana and Alaska and lived in Wisconsin for roughly 20 years.

"I'm very excited about the position," he said. "I do have quite a bit to learn about Washington and the uniqueness of its agricultural industry."

Fortenbery told the commissioners he was already working on a project to determine the contribution of wheat production to the state's overall economy.

Another project he's working on is whether regulations need to be changed at the federal or exchange level to address a lack of convergence in some futures contracts.

"In the last four or five years, there's been some real issues with convergence -- wheat futures and cash price haven't come together," Fortenbery said. "It's hard to offer a forward cash contract when you don't really know what the relationship is going to be at expiration between the contract and cash price."

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is also getting a lot of political pressure to regulate new trades. Fortenbery recently recommended to the CFTC that it consider markets individually instead of applying a blanket rule to all markets.

"What's wrong in the oil market is not the same thing going on in the dairy market or wheat market," he said.