Benjamin Senauer

• Co-author and Recipient of the AAEA Quality of Communication Award, Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization, 2003
• Co-Director of The Food Industry Center, University of Minnesota, 2001-2007
• Outstanding Review of Agricultural Economics Article, 2001
• Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy, University of Minnesota, 1993-1999
• Lead co-author, Food Trends and the Changing Consumer,1991
• Single Semester Leaves, Cambridge University (Spring 1990), World Health Organization (Spring 1998), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (Spring 2004)
• Sabbatical Leaves, International Food Policy Research Institute, 1984-85 and 1999-2000
• Assistant, Associate and Full Professor, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, 1974-present
• PhD/MS, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, 1972 and 1975
• BA in Economics with High Honors, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1968

Benjamin Senauer has been a highly productive faculty member at the University of Minnesota for over 30 years. He has been an intellectual leader in the areas of consumer behavior and welfare, the U.S. food programs and policy, and global poverty and hunger. He has thought ahead of the curve, identifying emerging issues and applying rigorous analysis to the questions raised.

Senauer has served in positions of leadership with two important centers at the University of Minnesota. His early research focused on consumer demand and welfare analysis and the USDA food programs. In the 1980s and 1990s, he applied household models to understanding the determinants of health and nutrition in developing countries.

Senauer was a co-recipient of the AAEA award for the Outstanding Journal Article published in The Review of Agricultural Economics in 2001. He has co-authored two influential books: Food Trends and the Changing Consumer and Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization, which received the AAEA Quality of Communication Award.

Many of Senauer’s publications communicate with broader audiences. His 2007 co-authored article “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor,” in Foreign Affairs was quoted or referred in scores of newspaper articles and other media reports and republished in French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.  His co-authored 2007 article on school lunch in the RAE was covered in over 250 newspapers and television news programs.