Agricultural Economics—Without Apology
Duke political science doctoral candidate Matt Dickenson had a great post last week in which he looked at the micro-institutions we call “meals.”
Inspired by the traditional American thanksgiving “dinner,” which is often eaten around 3PM (i.e., between the usual times for lunch and dinner in the United States), Matt asked why most of us eat three meals a day, and why are those three meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
Here’s an excerpt from his post:
In my post yesterday, I listed some of the policy options available to curb rising food prices. Third among those options was to “encourage (public) agricultural research, which has practically ground to a halt since the 1980s.”
This week, Science published a very important article by the US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service’s Keith Fuglie and coauthors, in which the authors look at the role of private agricultural research. The title of the article is “The Contribution of Private Industry to Agricultural Innovation,” and the abstract is as follows:
Food Prices, Meat Consumption, and Paternalism
I took part it a Triangle Institute for Security Studies event at NC State last week on the theme of “Energy and Security,” where I briefly discussed my work on food prices and social unrest.
At the end of my talk, I mentioned a few policy options that global policy makers could pursue if they want to keep food prices down: