Raymond R. Beneke, born on a farm in 1919 in Pocahontas, Iowa, began his high school years in a school building heated by burning ear corn because corn was a cheaper source of energy than coal. As a child of the Great Depression he witnessed firsthand the financial suffering and the mental and physical pain caused by the economic chaos of the early 1930s. Beneke first heard of John Maynard Keynes in a small informal group in high school discussing the massive economic crisis that engulfed the community and the country. From these discussions led by Norman Norland, a dedicated and talented high school instructor, Beneke developed a resolve to become an agricultural economist.

Beneke received the B.S. at Iowa State University in 1940 after teaching vocational agriculture for two years at the Winfield, Iowa, high school. He began graduate study at ISU in 1945 and was awarded the master's degree in agricultural economics in 1946. He was an instructor at the University of Minnesota where he received his PhD in 1949. Ray Beneke joined the staff at Iowa State in 1948 where he became Professor Emeritus after forty-five years of service to the university.

In 1949 Dr. Beneke was asked to serve as secretary-treasurer to the Iowa Association of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, a position he held for five years. It was a struggling organization with forty-five members, but one that had potential as an outreach activity. Beneke set out to instill vitality into the group through promoting programs with greater relevance, more emphasis on membership recruitment, and firmer financial footing. It had 120 members when he gave up the secretary-treasurer responsibilities; it now has 300-plus members. The leadership experience that he gained with this pragmatic group would prove to be valuable later.

Professor Beneke wrote a textbook on farm management (Wiley 1955) in an effort to incorporate more economics into farm management, and coauthored another book on the management of tenant-operated farms. During the early years he invested his time and energy heavily in the development and teaching of farm management.

From 1960 to 1973, Ray was immersed in refining linear programming into a useful farm decision-making tool. The effort culminated in writing and publishing with Ronald Winterboer, a graduate research assistant, the book Linear Programming Applications to Agriculture, Iowa State University Press, 1973. This book was widely used and published in Spanish and Mandarin editions.

Professor Beneke enjoyed the classroom immensely and participated enthusiastically. Dr. Beneke was given responsibility for directing the agricultural business curriculum where enrollment increased from 56 students in 1950 to 200 in 1955, reaching a peak enrollment of 600-plus students, the largest in the College of Agriculture. Dr. Beneke received the Outstanding Teacher award from Iowa State University in 1968, the first year such an award was extended, and the Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching award from AAEA in the same year.

ISU's economics department first became involved in a major way with international programs in the early 1960s. Beneke had summer assignments in Peru in 1964 and 1965 and in Mexico in 1967. These summer experiences made a lasting impression on him. He was firmly convinced that the economics discipline could make a major contribution toward alleviating poverty in the third world through improving decision making in both the public and private sectors. Making Midwest agriculture marginally more efficient seemed less important to him after he had seen the economic problems in the poor countries of the world. Consequently, he was supportive of efforts by economics faculty members to spend time in LDCs and to seek USAID contracts for work in LDCs. He also welcomed qualified graduate students from third world countries, believing that the training of foreign graduate students was an efficient approach to improving the human condition in those countries.

The economics department at Iowa State University is large and complex. When Ray Beneke was chair, the department had fifty faculty positions, half of them in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and half in the College of Agriculture. Beneke reported to three deans--the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the dean of Agriculture, and the dean of Extension. He operated well in this demanding environment and enjoyed the confidence and support of the department's faculty as well as college and university administrators throughout his twelve-year tenure as DEO.

Beneke stepped down as department chair in 1984 at the age of 65. Over the next few years, he obtained a strengthening grant from USAID and a grant from the Tinker Foundation to build ties between ISU and professionals in the LDCs in which the department had a history of providing technical assistance.

Beneke served as secretary-treasurer of the American Agricultural Economics Association for the term 1985-93. The American Agricultural Economics Association is markedly stronger in 1995 than it was at Ray Beneke's first session as secretary-treasurer that took place during the Association's 75th anniversary meetings at Iowa State University in August 1985. Ray's presence has been a constant in Association governance during the past decade despite the measured turnover in composition of the Association's executive board and Foundation board. Throughout this period of rapid innovation and change, Ray Beneke provided effective stewardship of Association affairs, a dependable institutional memory, and skill in the development and guidance of an increasingly complex business office.

Ray Beneke has had a major and lasting impact on the agricultural economics profession because he gave impetus to the initiation and development of the AAEA Foundation, developed and managed innovative plans for its funding, and entrepreneured some of its most successful projects. He was among the small band that, in 1985, proposed that there be an AAEA Foundation. Asher Hobson's initial $25,000 gift made the dream of the Foundation suddenly feasible. However, there needed to be more funding. Ray Beneke developed the concept of Appreciation Clubs. He established the precedent and the rules by organizing and assuring the success of the Earl Heady Appreciation Club, dedicated to the memory of his long-time friend and colleague.