U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary for Research, Education, Economics Dr. Scott Hutchins announced that USDA has named Dr. Spiro Stefanou to lead the Economic Research Service (ERS) as its new administrator.

“We look forward to adding Dr. Stefanou’s more than 30 years of leadership and expertise in agricultural economics as we usher in a new era for ERS. Under his leadership, ERS will thrive as a world-class economic powerhouse and will continue to build and deliver scientifically-sound economic data and research to help shape U.S. agricultural policy and to better serve our customers and stakeholders across the nation,” said Hutchins.

Dr. Stefanou served as a professor of economics at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agriculture for more than five years. He holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the University of California, Davis, and M.S. in agricultural and resource economics from the University of Maryland, and a B.A. in anthropology from George Washington University.

Dr. Stefanou is an expert in the agricultural economics areas of production analysis; innovation, growth, and performance; agricultural and food industries; and the dynamics of economic adjustment.

Prior to working at the University of Florida, he was professor of agricultural economics at Penn State University for more than 30 years.

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He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and was a Marie Curie Senior Fellow at the University of Crete (Rethymnon, Greece), Mansholt Senior Fellow at Wageningen University (Netherlands), and Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy).

He has been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Vienna, Austria), and the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute (at Chania).

Dr. Stefanou has served on the editorial boards of six national and international journals and is presently the managing editor of Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy in addition to being past editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

In related news, Todd Hubbs is leaving the University of Illinois for a senior outlook position with the ERS. A statement from the university said Hubbs will “still be very much involved in grain price outlook work.” Unfortunately, with Hubb’s departure, the university said it has no choice but to suspend publication of the weekly grain price outlook on farmdoc daily.  “We will still publish hog and cattle price outlook articles by Jason Franken of Western Illinois University once or twice a quarter,” the note from Scott Irwin, farmdoc team leader stated.