The future of agricultural and applied economics departments

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.