Whither Goeth agricultural economics?

Quiet Achiever It is always sad when we lose colleagues. But it is particularly sad when they die too young. We worked with John for many years, and he was always highly regarded as a professional in agricultural and environmental economics. He was somewhat shy and retiring, always a gentle person, quietly spoken, very thoughtful and scholarly and very caring towards his colleagues, and undergraduate and postgraduate students. Former postgraduate students have commented that John's style as a supervisor was to guide and encourage, rather than to direct. He was an absolute joy to work with. We received numerous responses from his colleagues in agricultural and environmental economics following the announcement of his death, as we expected. But it was only when we read responses from colleagues around the world in fisheries resources and economics that we realised how widespread his impact has been. John was a member of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade. Following John's death, the Institute circulated to its membership an appreciation of John's contributions and forwarded their comments to us. He was indeed a ‘Quiet Achiever’. John was born in Scotland and raised in London. He obtained a BSc in Economics and Accounting at Bristol University and a PhD in Agricultural Economics at Wye College, University of London in 1971. He came to Australia in 1971 and for 3 years was a Research Fellow in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Business Management at the University of New England (UNE). Here, John commenced the building of an Aggregative Programming Model for Australian Agriculture (APMAA) under the supervision of Professors John Dillon and John Guise. The project grew to support a team of four full-time researchers and was ahead of its time. It continued after John left UNE. John joined La Trobe University in 1975 as a lecturer in the School of Economics where he stayed for 37 years, reaching positions of Reader and Associate Professor. John's wife Ann wrote after his death that when John was still well he remembered with great fondness the halcyon days at La Trobe with his agricultural economics colleagues. His main research and teaching interests at La Trobe University were in agricultural, fisheries, forestry and environmental economics. He employed and further developed decision-making tools – in particular dynamic programming. He initiated and taught a wide array of courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including microeconomic theory, cost-benefit analysis, global environmental issues, resource and environmental economics, environmental law and management, and location and transport economics, to name a few. He supervised around a dozen PhD theses including ‘Methodological issues in contingent valuation: An application to endangered species’; ‘Sustainable and conventional agriculture: An economic analysis of Australian cereal/livestock farming’; ‘Trade games: non-cooperative strategies in the international wheat market’; ‘Incentives for switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources by the North and the South: a game-theoretic analysis of response to global warming’; and ‘The effect of trade in carbon credits on global timber demand’. John published around 50 journal articles, a number of books and book chapters, including the book ‘Dynamic Programming: Applications to Agriculture and Natural Resources’. His journal articles ranged from ‘A model for determining optimal feeding and marketing policies for beef cattle’ to ‘The impact of quotas on the Southern Bluefin Tuna industry’. The article ‘Within-season rents: maximized or dissipated in an open-access fishery?’ co-authored by John with Rognvaldur Hannesson won the outstanding article award in Marine Resource Economics for 2006. His book on Dynamic Programming is a seminal work that has been widely quoted in the literature. A reviewer in the Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics (1988) concluded that the book would make the tools of dynamic analysis available to a much wider audience of applied economists and that its greatest use would be for researchers and applied economists in the analysis of stochastic and dynamic problems. A valuable feature of the book was its inclusion of generalised computer programs in BASIC for different classes of dynamic programming problems. John won research grants including a significant grant by The Australian Research Council for a project on the ‘Determination of Optimal Annual Fish Catches allowing for Multicohort Stocks and Adjustments in Fleet Size’. He was also appointed Project Leader by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research for the project ‘Maximising the economic benefits to Pacific Island Nations from management of migratory tuna stocks’ with a budget of approximately $600,000. Professional positions held by John have included Book Review Editor and Joint Editor, Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics; Associate Dean for Research and Postgraduate Studies, School of Economics and Commerce, La Trobe University; President, Victorian Branch of the Australian Agricultural Economics Society; Distinguished Research Fellow, Centre for Fisheries Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen; and Associate Editor, Marine Resource Economics. John also participated in a number of consultancies including for the Bureau of Immigration Research on ‘Immigration, Population Growth and the Environment’; and the Victorian Department of Conservation and Environment on ‘Economic Principles for the Establishment and Optimisation of Conjunctive Water Use Schemes’. John had several periods of sabbatical leave in the United States, Norway, England and Scotland, as well as at Australian universities. He and his wife Ann were especially fond of Edinburgh and planned to make their home there in retirement. Unfortunately, John's retirement years were few and beset by the rapid onset of dementia. John is survived by Ann and their daughters Jessica and Vanessa. John will be sorely missed by all those who knew him.

Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomieVolume 68, Issue 2 p. 139-142 SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE Introduction to the special issue on COVID-19 and the Canadian agriculture and food sectors: Thoughts from the pandemic onset Alan P. Ker, Corresponding Author Alan P. Ker [email protected] Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, OAC Research Chair in Agricultural Risk and Policy, Guelph, Canada Institute for the Advanced Study of Food and Agricultural Policy, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada Correspondence Alan P. Ker, Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, N1K 1E7, Canada. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorRyan Cardwell, Ryan Cardwell Department of Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, CanadaSearch for more papers by this author Alan P. Ker, Corresponding Author Alan P. Ker [email protected] Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, OAC Research Chair in Agricultural Risk and Policy, Guelph, Canada Institute for the Advanced Study of Food and Agricultural Policy, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada Correspondence Alan P. Ker, Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, N1K 1E7, Canada. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorRyan Cardwell, Ryan Cardwell Department of Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, CanadaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 April 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/cjag.12245Citations: 34Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume68, Issue22020 Special Issue: COVID‐19 and the Canadian agriculture and food sectors: Thoughts from the pandemic onsetJune 2020Pages 139-142 This article also appears in:COVID-19 and the Canadian Agriculture and Food Sectors: Thoughts from the Pandemic Onset RelatedInformation

Leibenstein has suggested that losses from Xor technical inefficiency may be far more important than losses from allocative inefficiency., Several recent studies have attempted to measure the magnitude of these former losses, while Timmer and Miiller2 have noted that invocation of the term "technical efficiency" may imply an admission of the analyst's incomplete understanding of the production process. Improved specification of the model may relate interfirm productivity variability to input variability, rather than to the somewhat enigmatic technical efficiency. This improved specification may be extremely helpful to policymakers in developing nations, where the list of proposed programs often includes many that aim at improving management. For example, in the area of agricultural development there are frequent proposals related to extension services, farmer training centers, model farmer programs, best-farmer awards, field days, mass-media programs, and the like. The specific content of such programs may vary considerably: teaching specific farm skills, teaching general skills such as literacy and arithmetic, exhorting farmers to work harder, stimulating demand for cash goods, and attempting to develop a generally more modern, change-oriented outlook. If policymakers know why some farmers are better managers (i.e., why there are technical efficiency differentials), they might have firmer grounds for

Changes in agriculture have led to faculty reductions and shifts in research funding sources for agricultural economics departments. Agricultural economics journals have been affected by these developments, since they must compete for authors and readers in a changed market. One strategy regional journals have used to address these changes has been renaming to names that suggest the journals publish a broader range of applied economics research. This article examined changes in the distribution of authorship of the Review of Agricultural Economics, the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics before and after their renaming.

As one of the last agricultural frontiers of the humid tropics, Amazonia is the largest area of the world currently undergoing frontier settlement. Although the earliest intrusions of foreign populations into Amazonia date from pre-Hispanic times, the large-scale entrance of peasant colonists into the vast region is a recent phenomenon. Much of this movement represents the spontaneous migration of peoples, but governments in the region have also become increasingly interested in opening up and integrating Amazonia to national and international economies. These actions are frequently seen as potential solutions to a number of national problems, including the need to increase agricultural production, correct spatial imbalances in the distribution of population, exploit frontier lands for reasons of national security, and defuse potentially serious political problems resulting from the existing agrarian structure, landlessness, and unemployment. The upper basin of the Amazon in Ecuador, bordering on the eastern slopes of the Andes, is one such area of frontier settlement. Recent decades have witnessed the rapid conversion of these Amazonian forests to agricultural uses through a series of schemes bearing such labels as land development and colonization. Most forest intervention in the region has come at the hands of colonist farmers attempting to establish land claims along transport routes originally constructed to aid in petroleum exploration and exploitation. These are farmers who formerly have made a living in long-established farmlands and who, for various reasons (population pressures, pervasive poverty, maldistribution of farmland, lack of inputs for intensive cultivation, lack of nonagrarian livelihood opportunities, and generally inadequate rural development) have been increasingly squeezed out of their homelands. A marginal person by virtue of his low socioeconomic and political status, the farmer often perceives

Measuring the Immeasurable: The Evolution of the Size of Informal Economy in the Agricultural Sector in the EU-15 Up to 2019

Public interest in food systems has grown dramatically, and agricultural economists have important roles to play in contributing to and leading large-scale interdisciplinary studies of the subject. Key topics include understanding food system participants' behaviors and incentives and determining what food systems can and cannot achieve. I review a global food-security project funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture that illustrates the interactions between production, distribution, and consumption of food and regional self-reliance, as well as other important areas in which agricultural and regional economists can gainfully apply their tools and methods, including studies of the impacts of local food and network analyses.

Agricultural new quality productive forces are an important driving force for the transformation of China’s agricultural economy and the realization of sustainable development. This study proposes a novel channel to verify the negative effects of climate risk on agricultural new quality productive forces based on the empirical evidence of 31 provinces in China from 2012 to 2022. Specifically, baseline regression results indicate that a 10% increase in climate risk leads to a 1.18% decrease in agricultural new quality productive forces. Moreover, mechanism tests indicate that climate risk negatively affects agricultural new quality productive forces mainly through increasing the severity of natural disasters. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that variances in agricultural digital economy levels, government investment in environmental protections, and the depth of agricultural insurance coverage endowments result in substantial discrepancies in the effects of climate risk on agricultural new quality productive forces. Finally, this study finds that the impact of climate risk varies across provinces with different regional locations and geographical conditions. This study provides useful insights for coping with climate risk and promoting the high-quality development of agricultural new quality productive forces.

I am perhaps not the best person to argue the case of Agricultural Economics over that of Applied Economics. When I came to Clemson in 1975, we were Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. When the number of sociologists dropped to one in 1990, we became Agricultural and Applied Economics. Our Ph.D. program had already adopted the title Applied Economics in 1984. People like Jim Hite, Buddy Dillman, and Mark Henry were leaders in Environmental Economics and Rural Economic Development and were fans of Applied Economics. I strongly agreed with these name changes at the time. Clemson was in the vanguard of similar name changes across the country over the past 25 years. But, I wonder now if we were wise or not.

This paper analyzes in three contexts the effects of changing economic conditions and varying economic perspectives on the way land is considered in economic doctrine. The first considers agricultural land use where agriculture is connected to the rest of the economy exclusively through input and commodity markets, and when all other parts of the economy are assumed to remain constant. The second connects agriculture to the remainder of the economy by virtue of a shared natural environment, facilitating a discussion of natural resource and environmental economics in relation to agricultural, institutional, and land economics. The third context permits economic change in the entire economy with particular attention given to population density, space, and distance. Private and public decision making are discussed with attention to federal, state, and local division of powers.

MR. E. F. NASH, who has been elected professor of agricultural economics and advisory economist in the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, has recently been serving in the Food and Agriculture Branch of the Control Commission in Germany, where he has had responsibility for agricultural and food prices in relation to the cost of living and the control of inflation. He was educated at the City of London School and, at University College, Oxford, where he held a classical scholarship. He took first class honours in Classical Moderations, Greats and Modern Greats. In 1927 he was awarded a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship and proceeded to the University of Chicago, where he studied economics. Afterwards he lectured in economics at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, and in 1930 became staff tutor for extra-mural classes, University of Birmingham, where he lectured in economics and economic history. In 1930 he joined the staff of the Economic Intelligence Branch of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and as member of that staff gained special experience of inquiries in the field of agricultural statistics and economics. He specialized in the study of agricultural development as affected by the course of international trade, commercial policy and political conditions. In 1939 he joined the Food (Defence Plans) Department, which on the outbreak of war became the Ministry of Food, where he was associated with numerous inquiries of an economic character, and continued with that Ministry until the early part of 1945. Although Mr. Nash has not had any personal associations with the agricultural industry, he has combined a wide experience of inquiries into the economics of agriculture, food supplies and prices, with previous experience of intra-and extra-mural teaching.

This study examines the impact relationship of economic restructuring on the development of a circular economy in agriculture and green growth within the context of Vietnam. The quantitative research method is used by investigating and surveying and SPSS and AMOS-based data processing. The survey scale encompasses 538 samples, including individuals, households, and agricultural organizations and cooperatives distributed across the Northern, Central, and Southern regions of Vietnam. The research results have provided valuable scientific contributions by demonstrating the intermediary role of both factors: efficiency in mobilizing and utilizing capital and linkages in the production and consumption of agricultural products within the impact relationship of economic restructuring on the development of a circular economy in agriculture. Furthermore, the development of a circular economy has been proven to have a positive impact on green growth in agriculture. Concurrently, linkages in the production and consumption of agricultural products positively impact the efficiency in mobilizing and utilizing capital. Based on these findings, the study proposes several recommendations to contribute to the development of a circular economy and promote green growth in the agricultural sector in Vietnam.

Concern about the relevance of work carried on by agricultural economists probably began three-quarters of a century ago with the appointment of Henry C. Taylor as the first professor of agricultural economics in a land grant institution. The dialogue has continued with changing emphasis during periods of depression, war years, overproduction, and structural changes in the production sector resulting from the historic migration of farm workers to urban centers and out of agricultural employment. Castle in 1970 warned that flexibility in organizational structure of research and extension activities would be necessary if programs were to have great relevance to fast changing and nonstatic problems. Johnson's scholarly address to the American Agricultural Economics Association in 1971 argued that agricultural economics is not dead or dying just because problems of the 1970s are different from those of a decade ago. Grove, Crockett, and Narrie elicited spirited viewpoints in their comments and replies regarding irrelevance as viewed by professional agricultural economists. With regard to work relevant to the economic problems of commercial agriculture, Castle correctly stated that studies on the farm firm and nonfarm firm, performance of the industry, and commercial agricultural policy are areas of study experiencing the greatest decline as public concern and intellectual excitement are being generated elsewhere (p. 832). To explore further the opinion of Castle and to provide myself with an updated view of relevance of university research and extension activities in agricultural economics to agribusiness firms, I surveyed the chairman of each department of agricultural economics at land grant universities in our nation. In addition, either by letter or by telephone, I requested viewpoints and opinions from administrators of land grant institutions, as well as a large number of economists employed by agribusiness firms, trade associations that are agricultural in nature, and farm organizations. Responses received were most helpful in broadening my understanding and knowledge of present programs and activities. In some instances, the information was sketchy and far from complete. From others, great pains were made to give detailed facts on all research and extension activities as well as on the interrelationships of the teaching function with the other two. Interpretations and conclusions reached from study of this mass of information are totally my responsibility and an honest effort to bring into focus relevance to agribusiness firms as I see it. In performing this chore, I do so as one who at one time wore the research and teaching hat at a land grant university. Moreover, my longer tenure has been as director of economic research for a major regional farmer cooperative. This paper has five major purposes: to examine the direct and indirect benefits to agribusiness firms from better informed agricultural producers, to present views on types of university research and extension activities that should be emphasized, to discuss possible conflicts that exist between university activities and the programs of agribusiness firms, to explore the potentials and problems of joint university-firm research activities, and to bring into focus the viewpoint of agribusiness firms regarding the relevance of university research and extension programs.

Vink, N. (2022). Presidential Address to the 31st (virtual) ICAE. African agricultural development: How are we contributing?. Agricultural Economics, 53, 540– 562. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12725Anderson, K. (2022). 16th Elmhirst Lecture, presented in the opening plenary session of the ICAE. Agriculture in a more uncertain global trade environment. Agricultural Economics, 53, 563– 579. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12726Brenton, P., Chemutai, V., & Pangestu, M. (2022). Trade and food security in a climate change‐impacted world. Agricultural Economics, 53, 580– 591. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12727Unnevehr, L. J. (2022). Addressing food safety challenges in rapidly developing food systems. Agricultural Economics, 53, 529– 539. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12724

This study contributes to the literature on the impact of farmer contact with agricultural extension services on farm productivity, drawing on a unique panel sample of households residing in three resettlement areas of rural Zimbabwe. It pays particular attention to the potential confounding effects of the biases identified by Birkhaeuser, Evenson, and Feder. Specifically, we exploit the longitudinal nature of our data to estimate the impact of extension on the value of crop production per hectare, with and without controls for unobservable household fixed effects. The attraction of this estimator is that the differencing process rids the specification of the correlation between extension and the disturbance term. We find that after controlling for innate productivity characteristics and farmers' ability using household fixed- effects estimation, access to agricultural extension services, defined as receiving one or two visits per agricultural year, raises the value of crop production by about 15%. This parameter estimate is statistically significant. Another unique feature of these data are, for a subsample, extension worker assessments of farmers' ability. We find that farmers with above-average ability are indeed more productive, producing 40%-50% higher output per hectare of cropped area. Controlling for innate productivity using locality dummies, farm plot characteristics, and farmers' ability using these assessments of ability, we continue to obtain a positive association between access to extension and productivity, an association that is equal in magnitude to our fixed-effects results. However, we also find considerable variability in these parameter estimates across individual crop years.