Doing Good by Choosing Well: Priorities for Agricultural Economics

Abstract

AbstractPublic decision makers, administrators, and supporters of agricultural economics research, teaching, and outreach activities have communicated a need for a more coherent expression of priorities. In addition, they have recognized that priorities should be focused on addressing and solving problems of importance to the public good. The agricultural economics profession has responded to this call for a well‐defined set of priorities. A systematic set of priority‐setting activities has included soliciting the views of stakeholders (i.e., users and potential users of the goods and services provided by agricultural economists) and of agricultural economists about priorities for the profession. The Council on Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics (C‐FARE) led a process to integrate this information into a set of professional priorities. This paper describes the key considerations in establishing priorities, describes the C‐FARE process, and reports the results of the priority‐setting process for agricultural economics.