The agricultural economics profession has been engaged in a vigorous debate about its future for some time. All agricultural economics departments have had to adjust as the number of farms and the rural population has declined. The core question is how much to adjust. Some voices advocate a completely new vision centered on “applied economics.” Other voices counsel a more moderated adjustment.
I was privileged to work with three highly distinguished members of the profession—Jeff Dorfman, Gopi Muniswamy, and David Zilbermann—to write a think piece entitled, “The Future of Agricultural and Applied Economics Departments.” It was published this week in the journal Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy (AEPP). Here is the abstract of the article:
“Agricultural and Applied Economics departments in the United States have evolved to serve traditional and new stakeholders under the three-legged land grant mission: extension, research, and teaching. Substantial shifts in the focus of faculty, sometimes matching demand from stakeholders and sometimes not, raise fundamental questions about their strategic direction. We argue agricultural and applied economics has a mission to solve problems, current and future, by working with physical sciences; specifically, the study of economic problems of the food supply chain and bioeconomy. By focusing on this mission, agricultural and applied economics will provide more value-added to society and may even improve economics while doing so.”
I am very grateful to the AAEA and Wiley for making the article open-access to the public. Here is the link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aepp.13432. I hope the article will be read widely and provoke a healthy discussion about the direction of the profession.
I think one of the things that makes the article so useful is that the four of us represent different subject matter areas, regions of the country, and types of departments. Yet we were able to find common ground about how to move forward.
Comments encouraged!
Laurence J. Norton Chair of Agricultural Marketing
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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