The Nature of Agricultural Economics (1)

The nature, foundation, structure and future of agricultural economics has been of concern for a long time. Even though after 90's it is noticed that agricultural economics and its education have been experiencing a downturn, it is still holding the frontier of applied econometrics and environmental economics, which are something heading future. When we look back twenty years, where lots of concerns and thoughts stacked from.

Agricultural Economics is Applied Agricultural economics is by its very nature an applied discipline-a discipline that focuses on the application of economic rinciples taken from general economics to practical, applied problems based on keen observation of the behavior of individuals, groups and institutions within an economic setting. Some agricultural economists argue that despite its reliance on economic theory, nearly all the research being conducted by agricultural economists is applied - in that the research has as its core basis observable economic phenomena based upon human behavior. Like theoretical physics related to the origins of the universe, much of the most advanced economic research being conducted in what are regarded as the best economics graduate schools has little grounding in observable economic phenomena, and consists of abstract mathematical proofs of economic theories that are seldom verifiable based on data gathered from the real world.
                                                        --David L. Debertin, 1999.


There is decreasing diversity among economics departments with respect to what is taught among the top-ten schools - that because of the inter-hiring only within the small group of schools thought to be in the peer group, there is little diversity in what is taught or in methodological approaches to research considered acceptable. As I look at the agricultural economics top-ten list, however, I see considerably greater diversity in the kinds of graduate education that would be obtained. An agricultural economics Ph.D. from Purdue would be very different from one obtained from UC-Berkeley, and no one would characterize a North Carolina State ag. econ. Ph.D. as being a clone of one produced by UW-Madison! In my view-the diversity of these graduate programs, along with the additional diversity contained in lower-ranked schools--is a source of great strength in agricultural economics, not a weakness.

                                                        --David L. Debertin, 1999.