President’s Column
June 2023
This newsletter is my last. AAEA members have asked me if the presidency has been bad or hard. My answer is no. We have a great board and collaborators like Kristen McGuire, our Executive Director, and the AAEA Staff – Mary, Allison, Jessica, Michael, and Austin. They have made serving as president a joy. Also, the broader leadership team of section leaders and committee members are the folks who make AAEA run. Thank you for your volunteer efforts. We are stronger because of you.
I am excited to see the newly elected board members. Tim, Vincenzina, and Ashok will provide great leadership to AAEA. I thank all who ran for the Board. Your contributions to AAEA are deeply appreciated, and we know that you will all continue to contribute to making AAEA great. Thank you!
The editors of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE) have made great strides in diversifying the topics in the journal by hosting a workshop and sponsoring a special virtual issue called the Economics of Inequality in Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Systems. I was pleased to see several junior scholars presenting their papers and engaging each other and senior scholars on their work. These exchanges are vital mentoring opportunities that strengthen our research and membership. To the organizing team of AJAE Editors, especially Amy Ando, who led this effort, and the senior scholars in attendance, thank you for your engagement in this activity. In addition, we appreciate the financial support for the conference from the USDA National Institute on Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the AAEA Trust. Even if you did not participate in the workshop, you can still participate in the virtual special issue. Please submit papers for consideration between July 21 and December 15, 2023.
As I end my term as president, I will end it with the hope that began my presidency that is moving our efforts toward justice. Preaching at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC March 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, assured the audience, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” King was speaking out against poverty in the United States, racism, and armed conflict. These challenges still face us today. Some have critiqued this ideal to suggest that justice is inevitable. If we wait long enough, justice will happen in time.
However, King disputed this notion and encouraged us to do the work of justice collectively. The certainty of King’s vision was an encouragement to do the work of justice. I am encouraged to do that work, whether small or obscure. I have struggled to do this work, to find my voice, and to use my skills to do the work of justice. I am not there fully, but I continue to explore ways to collaborate toward this end. Little by little, I am finding ways to raise my voice, my hand, and my gaze to the work of redressing inequality, but I am not alone. Our collective efforts move us toward justice.
Working on poverty, inequality, or development are obvious examples of working on justice issues. Documenting these injustices is an important initial step that we can engage in, yet, we must push beyond the documentation to identify interventions and policies to mitigate these inequalities. However, to do that work, we depend on those who identify empirical strategies that allow us to provide evidence to discuss effective policies and interventions. We depend on those out in the field engaging communities and policymakers to inform our work and identify the areas of analysis. Even if your work seems far from the work of justice, your efforts may matter for justice if it informs the analysis and praxis in meaningful ways. I believe that if we set our intentions to do the work of justice in whatever our area of work, we are contributing to the collective actions that will extend to the moral arc that bends toward justice. This work is the work of our Association.