Obituary

In Memoriam: J. Roy Black, 1941-2020

J. Roy Black, a model professor of agricultural economics, passed away in Okemos, Michigan, on June 27, 2020.  Raised on a ranch in Hinsdale, Montana, Black completed his B.S. at Montana State University and his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota.  He joined Michigan State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics in January 1970 as an assistant professor of farm management and production economics.  He devoted the next fifty years to research, extension, and teaching to enhance farmers’ ability to make a profit and manage risk.

Black believed in the ability of farm managers to make good decisions if given the right tools.  He devoted much of his career to building those tools.  In research and policy circles, he is best known for his work on crop insurance contract design, especially the area yield contract that markedly reduced the transaction cost of indemnity payments.  In recent years, he applied his passion for risk analysis to how climate change affects optimal orchard replacement.

Farmers, agribusiness managers, and Extension personnel are more likely to know his agricultural decision support programs.  These included cost-minimizing rations for dairy and beef cattle, weed control in corn and soybean, and break-even budgeting for risk management.  Many of them reached farmers through the MSU TelFarm and Extension farm management team that incorporated the latest financial and risk management methods into decision tools for farmers.

In a profession that strives—often with difficulty—to balance relevance with rigor, Black was equally insightful in a dairy barn talking rations as in a seminar room talking copulas.  He was a lifelong member of the American Statistical Association as well as the AAEA.  He mentored generations of MSU students, who went on to become successful farmers, business managers, consultants, and professors.  He also mentored his fellow MSU faculty members, three of whom became AAEA Fellows.

-- Scott Swinton