Duration: 10/01/2024 to 09/30/2029

Administrative Advisor(s):

NIFA Reps:

Non-Technical Summary

WERA-72 focuses on the scholarship of agribusiness and its future. WERA-72 provides faculty and decision-makers from land-grant and other universities, industry, and government a forum to interact, share information, and collaborate on research, teaching, and extension scholarship that pertains to issues important to agribusinesses. The efforts of the multistate coordination of Agribusiness scholarships through WERA-72 would advance the efficiency of the food supply chain, inform policy-making in agricultural and food systems, enhance agribusiness education programs in training the next generation agribusiness leaders, and ultimately contribute to a sustainable and thriving food economy.

 

Statement of Issues and Justification

Agribusiness is defined as the study of economic and managerial challenges within the global food, fiber, fuel, and feed system, encompassing private strategies and public policies [1]. It involves a complex network of actors, functions, and institutions. This includes agricultural producers, input suppliers, and firms providing value to consumers. Key agribusiness functions encompass exchange, processing, storage, transportation, facilitating market information transfer, risk management, and financial services within the food and fiber sectors. Agribusiness activities along the food supply chain are across states and global by nature and are critical to a safe and sustainable food supply and the prosperity of the economy. The WERA-72 Coordinating Committee provides an educational, research, and extension forum aimed at advancing agribusiness scholarship. This includes quantitative and qualitative research using economic, management, finance, and marketing theories, educational material development, teaching scholarship, and industry outreach programs. There is a need to tackle agribusiness issues and pursue agribusiness scholarship that meets the needs of stakeholders, including:

1. Agribusiness Research: Future research scholarship should explore key issues facing agribusinesses. These issues include enhancing efficiency and sustainability in food production, managing risk, meeting increasingly niche consumer food demands, supporting food and energy security, dealing with growing complexity in farm operations and supply chains, addressing consolidation in food and fiber systems, managing water and other scare resources, testing the desirability of various agricultural marketing arrangements, providing objective agricultural policy analysis, and harnessing big data and artificial intelligence to enhance problem-solving for the aforementioned issues, among others [2-7]. The challenges encountered in agribusiness are interrelated and dependent on political and economic issues affecting entire agricultural supply chains from the producer to the consumer.


2. Teaching Scholarship: Innovations in Agribusiness programs are vital to address the widening gap in workforce needs and impending student demographic shifts. The expansion of the agribusiness economy has increased demand for students with agribusiness training. Approximately 59,400 job openings annually are projected for college graduates in the Food, Agricultural, Renewable Natural Resources, and Environment sectors from 2020 to 2025, reflecting a 2.6% increase in positions over the past five years [8]. Conversely, the number of new high-school graduates in the U.S. is anticipated to peak in 2025, and decline by over 8% in the subsequent four years [9]. Compounded by challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a decline in high school students from 2020 to 2022 and reduced test results [10]. Addressing the tightening talent supply requires a focus on teaching scholarship and innovations in agribusiness education. Programs should emphasize applied problem-solving, data analytics, business and economics understanding, team dynamics, oral and written communication skills, and comprehension of the intricate food, fiber, fuel, and feed systems [2]. Advancements in teaching scholarship foster a pipeline of quality agribusiness professionals.

3. Extension Scholarship: Agribusiness extension programs provide an ideal outreach mechanism for agribusiness teaching and research advancements. Traditional agricultural economics extension programs have pivoted to provide more agribusiness extension programs focused on suppliers and buyers along the entire agricultural supply chain. These changes have been driven by both the changing demands of extension participants and the evolution of the agricultural industry. Extension scholarship also provides a unique way to attract extension professionals who are developing innovative tools and programs. Extension scholarship will focus on improvements and innovations in electronic delivery and outreach; distance learning; and strengthened collaborations across state lines that provide synergies across larger regions and maximize the output of agribusiness extension specialists [11-14].

WERA-72, in collaboration with organizations like the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA), plays a crucial role in promoting agribusiness research, teaching, and extension scholarship. This collaboration facilitates the dissemination of leading research and the discussion of best practices to prepare the next generation of agribusiness leaders.

 

Objectives

Procedures and Activities

The coordinating committee undertakes several activities to facilitate information exchange and achieve the above objectives. 

Foremost, a multi-day annual meeting is organized by the WERA-72 Executive Committee each summer. The meetings provide a venue for participants to collaborate on research, teaching, and extension scholarship activities (e.g. research projects, grant writing) through paper presentation sessions, project/grant workshops, and industry-academic panel discussions. Participation in the project includes university faculty with responsibilities in agribusiness research, extension, and teaching from traditional land grant institutions as well as selected public universities that also have programs targeting the agribusiness sector. The meeting calls will be promoted through our listserv of 143 active members and advertised through other collaborating organizations such as AAEA and IFAMA. The group strives to provide participants with innovative and appropriate channels to disseminate and exchange leading research on issues of importance to agribusiness firms and stakeholders. We actively encourage the participation of graduate and undergraduate students, providing them with not only opportunities to discuss their research efforts, but receive constructive feedback, as well as provide opportunities to shape new directions of agribusiness scholarship.   

The annual meetings also prioritize agribusiness industry engagement and facilitate productive industry-academic dialogues by inviting keynote speakers from agribusiness industries, organizing an industry panel, and an agribusiness tour. The meeting venue changes every year depending on the chair’s university or convenience, where the local stakeholders, such as agribusiness owners and managers, state government officials, and student alumni who work in agribusinesses, are invited to attend and actively engage in the annual meeting. Between 2019 to 2023, about 20 industry speakers and panelists participated in WERA-72 annual meetings, and meeting participants visited 5 local agribusinesses. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 annual meetings are virtual and the 2022 annual meetings are hybrid with in-person and virtual participants. Starting in 2023, the annual meeting is transiting back to mainly in-person with virtual access on paper sessions. 

The group also builds connections with other organizations to advance agribusiness research, teaching and curriculum innovation, and extension programs. For example, the group collaborates with the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) sections including Agribusiness, Economics, and Management (AEM), Teaching, Learning and Communication (TLC), and Extension (EXT) through joint track sessions in AAEA annual meetings and sponsorship in multistate and multi-institution agribusiness-focused projects. The coordination of public and privately funded research, teaching, and outreach programs is a unique contribution of WERA-72.

Expected Outcomes and Impacts

Projected Participation

View Appendix E: Participation

Educational Plan

Although this project does not have a specific extension and outreach component, the group thrives to foster the development of the field, especially in advancing new research, teaching, and extension ideas on agribusiness economics and management. The group will disseminate the information and knowledge developed in this project to stakeholders and scientific audiences through refereed journal articles, conference abstracts, and presentations, teaching notes and extension bulletins when appropriate, the AgEcon Search website, and through our annual meetings and reports. The project aims to set up and maintain a web page which will be updated and managed by the Communication Officer of the committee.

The annual meeting of the coordinating committee provides a forum for discussion and collaboration among participants and attendees interested in agribusiness issues. In addition to the published output from meeting presentations, the open forum enables participants to disseminate information via presentations at other professional meetings (including the Western Agricultural Economics Association (WAEA), NCR-194, the Food Distribution Research Society (FDRS), and the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), as well as through extension programming conducted at participants institutions and in the classroom. WERA-72 will also look to continue the relationship with the broader industry through participation of membership at industry conventions such as the National Grocers Association (NGA) and the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA).

WERA-72 engages with all previous and current meeting participants through an email list with about 150 members. In order to advance recruitment of participants, the project will continue promoting WERA-72 at other national and regional professional conferences including but not limit to the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and Western Agricultural Economics Association (WAEA). A WERA-72 webpage will be used to advance information dissemination publicly, in addition to periodical email communications. To attract diverse participants, the project will continue waiving annual meeting registration fee for graduate student participants and offer discounted registration fee for early career professionals. All members will be strongly encouraged to join WERA-72 officially through the NIMSS system. Clear instructions to enroll in WERA-72 on NIMSS will be sent periodically as reminders.

Organization/Governance

The governance for WERA-72 includes the election of a past chair, a Chair, a Chair-elect, a Secretary, a Treasurer, and a communication officer. Administrative issues will be addressed during the business meeting held in conjunction with the annual meeting. During the business meeting, elections will be conducted to fill the position of project Secretary every year. The Secretary is elected for a four-year rotation, from Sectuary to Chair-elect, then Chair, and past-Chair in the four-year term. Treasurer and communication officers are continuing positions to fulfill the budgetary and communication needs of WERA-72. Open to re-elect when the current officers cannot serve the full four-year rotation. WERA-72 membership is open to land-grant and non-land-grant institutions. All members are eligible to vote at the annual meeting. Administrative guidance will be provided by an assigned Administrative Advisor and a NIFA Representative.

Literature Cited

[1] Davis, J. H., & Goldberg, R. A. (1957). A Concept of Agribusiness. Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University.

[2] Featherstone, A.M. (2018). The farm economy: future research and education priorities. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 40(1): 136 – 154.

[3] Coble, K.H., Mishra, A.K., Ferrell, S. & Griffin, T. (2018). Big data in agriculture: a challenge for the future. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 40(1): 79 – 96.

[4] de Gennaro, B.C. and Forleo, M.B.,(2019). Sustainability perspectives in agricultural economics research and policy agenda. Agricultural and Food Economics, 7(1), pp.1-5.

[5] Ehlers, M.H., Huber, R. and Finger, R., (2021). Agricultural policy in the era of digitalisation. Food Policy, 100, p.102019.

[6] DeLay, N.D., Boehlje, M.D. and Ferrell, S., (2023). The economics of property rights in digital farming data: Implications for farmland markets. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.

[7] Gardner, J. G., Franken, J. R., & Boerngen, M. A. (2022). A Research Agenda for Cooperatives. Journal of Cooperatives, 36, 38-66.

[8] Fernandez, J.M., Goecker, A. D., Smith, E. R., & Wilson, C.A. (2020). Employment opportunities for college graduates. Retrieved from United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, https://www.purdue.edu/usda/employment/ on December 11, 2023.

[9] Prescott, B. T., & Bransberger, P. (2012). Knocking at the College Door: Projections of High School Graduates. Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

[10] Jack, R., Halloran, C., Okun, J., & Oster, E. (2023). Pandemic schooling mode and student test scores: Evidence from us school districts. American Economic Review: Insights, 5(2), 173–190. 

[11] Ward, R.A., Woods, T. & Wysocki, A. (2011). Agribusiness extension: the past, present, and future? International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 14(5): 125 – 140. 

[12] Malone, T., Monahan, J., Nicpon, K., Schaefer, K. A., & Cary, M. (2022). On the Strategic Creation of Extension and Outreach Content in a New Media Environment. Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), 4(2).

[13] Staples, A. J., Fontanilla-Diaz, C. A., Fuller, K. B., & Marshall, M. (2022). Can We Foster the Future of Extension through (Friendly) Competition? The Past, Present, and Future of the Graduate Student Extension Competition. Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), 4(2).

[14] Marxhall, T. L., Hagerman, A. D., Shear, H. E., Burdine, K. H., & Jablonski, B. B. (2022). Building Up the Next Generation of Extension Specialists. Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), 4(3).

Attachments

Land Grant Participating States/Institutions

AZ, FL, KY, ND, NM, UT

Non Land Grant Participating States/Institutions

California - Fresno, Illinois State University