![\"MonsantoShill\"](\"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/MonsantoShill.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOur friend M. (in pink) posted a link to that ridiculous article from the Guardian<\/em> about about how Westerners who eat quinoa are hurting the poor peasants of the Altiplano. I countered by posting a link to my post “Quinoa Nonsense, or Why the World Still Needs Agricultural Economists<\/a>,” and told M. that it was a bit more complicated than the Guardian<\/em> wanted it to be, because we really don’t know what the welfare effects of a change in the price of quinoa are.<\/p>\n Soon after, one of M.’s friends (in black up there) chimed in, saying that he’d never heard of quinoa, but that it was most likely a GMO, and that I probably worked for them. After some exchange (and no, he was definitely not joking; I did confirm that with M.), “probably” became “definitely,” presumably as a result of my working for the University of Minnesota… or something?<\/p>\n May I respectfully submit for consideration that the “Monsanto shill” accusation be now considered the food policy and agricultural economics equivalent of Godwin’s Law<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I attained an important milestone for an agricultural economist yesterday. (No, I was not made a fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.) Rather,…<\/p>\n