The UC Davis Agricultural and Resource Economics …...of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE) at the University of California, Davis, has much to be proud of and celebrate, including

The UC Davis Agricultural and Resource Economics

PhD Program

The First 50 Years

Alex F. McCalla, Julian M. Alston, and K. Aleks Schaefer

The UC Davis Agricultural and

Resource Economics PhD Program

The First 50 Years

Alex F. McCalla, Julian M. Alston, and K. Aleks Schaefer

Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics University of California, Davis One Shields Avenue Davis, CA 95616 https://are.ucdavis.edu

Copyright ©2017 The Regents of the University of California Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

All Rights Reserved

Photos on the book cover by Joshua Bingham:

Pictured on the front and continuing to the back is the courtyard of Voorhies Hall. Voorhies was home to the Department of Agricultural Economics from 1965 to 1994. The inset picture on the back is the Social Sciences and Humanities Building, where the department (changed to the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics in 1995) has been based since 1994.

Suggested Citation:

McCalla, Alex F., Julian M. Alston, and K. Aleks Schaefer. The UC Davis Agricultural and Resource Economics PhD Program: The First 50 Years. Davis, CA: Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis, 2017.

The University of California does not discriminate in any of its policies, procedures, or practices. The university is an affrmative action/equal opportunity employer.

ISBN 978-0-692-91192-1

http:https://are.ucdavis.edu

This manuscript was prepared for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the PhD program in Agricultural (and Resource) Economics at the

University of California, Davis, held at the UC Davis Conference Center, March 20–21, 2015. The authors are listed in descending

order of age and years at Davis.

AUTHORS

Alex F. McCalla is a professor emeritus of Agricultural and Resource Economics and professor emeritus of Management, University of California, Davis. He began with UC Davis in 1966. Information about his career, research, honors, published works, and more can be found at https://are.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/emeriti/alex-mccalla/

Julian M. Alston is a distinguished professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis. He began with UC Davis in 1988. Information about his career, research, honors, published works, and more can be found at https://are.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/julian-alston/

K. Aleks Schaefer will receive his PhD in 2017 from the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis. He began with UC Davis in 2012.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors gratefully acknowledge comments from colleagues on drafts; in particular, Rich Sexton and Gordon Rausser. Much appreciation is given to the alumni who, “In Their Own Words,” share recollections that touch on the comradery of our department. We thank each PhD alumna/us for making this book and ARE what they are. A special thanks is given to

Tina Saitone for her contributions of time and energy toward organizing the reunion celebration. We also thank Joshua Bingham and

Julie McNamara for helping with the fnal book design.

https://are.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/julian-alstonhttps://are.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/emeriti/alex-mccalla

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 PART 1: ANTECEDENTS, ANCESTORS, AND INSTITUTIONAL INFLUENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Our University of California Antecedents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Foundations and Evolving Infuences at Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Landmark Events in Our History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

PART 2: THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL AND RESOURCE ECONOMICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Agricultural Economics at Davis Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 25 Years of Growth and Consolidation, 1965–1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1966–70 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 1971–75 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 1976–80 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1981–85 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 1986–90 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

25 Years of Adaptation, 1991–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 1991–95 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 1996–2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2001–05 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2006–10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2011–15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Ever-Changing Interests and Background of Faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

PART 3: THE PHD PROGRAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Critical Events in the Evolving History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 1970s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 1980s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Adaptation, 1991–2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2005–14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Back to the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Evolving Relationship with Other Departments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Economics Department, UCD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Environmental Science and Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 ARE and GSM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Davis and Berkeley and the Giannini Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Program Administration: The GAC, Program Staff, and Other Staff Support . . . . . . . . . 46

Dissertations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Evolving Topical Emphasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Outstanding Advisors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

PART 4: ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND RECOGNITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Department-Wide Achievements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Our Students: Origins and Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Our Students: Accomplishments and Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Our Students: Professional Service, Honors, and Laurels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

PART 5: LIFE AND TIMES OF THE GRADUATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 In Their Own Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

1965–1974 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Richard Adams (1975 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

1975–1984 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Nicole Ballenger (1984 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

1985–1994 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Frances Homans (1993 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Carole Nuckton (1986 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Cathy Roheim (1990 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Mike Creel (1990 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Ken Foster (1990 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Sergio Ardila (1991 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Ila Temu (1991 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

1995–2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Brad Rickard (2003 Graduate), Joe Balagtas (2004 Graduate), Siwa Msangi (2004 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

2005–2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Ricky Volpe (2011 Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

PART 6: REUNION CELEBRATION: MARCH 20–21, 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Davis, CA: 268 Participate in 50th Anniversary Party, Including 113 PhD Alums . . . . . . 83

Special Awards and Other Recognitions Were Also Given Out to Attendees: . . . . . . . . 86

APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Appendix A: In Memoriam: Alumni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Appendix B: In Memoriam: Faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Appendix C: UCD at ERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Appendix D: Supplementary Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Appendix E: Dissertations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Appendix F: Historical Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

BOXES

1. Davis Campus Defning Events, 1946–1980. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2. The Rise and Decline of Agricultural Science and Agricultural Economics in It . . . . . . 11

3. Foundations of Agricultural Economics in the University of California . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4. Hiring Our Own Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

5. Administrative Roles Taken by ARE Faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

6. The Giannini Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

7. 50th Anniversary Celebration Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

8. Back to Davis (to the tune of “Summertime”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

TABLES

1. Department Chairs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2. Shifting Research Emphasis of Faculty, 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3. Graduate Administrative Committee (GAC) Chairs, 1965–2017. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

4. Leading Dissertation Advisors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

5. Outstanding Dissertation Award . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

6. Fellows and Other Lifetime Achievement Awards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

7. Planning Committee for the UC Davis ARE PhD Program 50th Anniversary Celebration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

C-1. Record of UC Davis PhD Graduates at the Economic Research Service. . . . . . . . . . 110

D-1. ARE Faculty by Individual, 1900–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

D-2. ARE Staff, 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

D-3. The Evolving ARE Faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

D-4. Our Graduates by the Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

D-5. Davis Alumni Who Have Served as Editors of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

D-6. Alumni Recipients of Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Awards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

FIGURES

1. The Evolving Agricultural Economics Faculty, 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2. The Evolution of Faculty Research, 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3. An Increasingly Diverse Faculty (Demographics), 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4. An Increasingly Diverse Faculty (Gender), 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

5. An Increasingly Diverse Faculty (Domestic vs. International), 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . 26

6. PhD Graduates Every 5 Years, 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

7. Gender of PhD Graduates, 1965–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

8. Balance of Dissertation Topics over Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

9. National Origin of Our Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

10. Top 10 Non-U.S. Countries of Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

11. Employment of Our Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

F-1. Letter from the Dean Approving the PhD Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

F-2. Original Student List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

F-3. Letter from Ben French to Alex McCalla Refecting the Creation of the ARE Department. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

F-4. Letter from Ben French to Alex McCalla Describing Davis and the ARE Program Circa 1966 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

F-5. Challenge Letter from GSA President Spiro Stefanou to UCB ARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

F-6. Letter from Samson Olayide (1967) to UC Davis Chancellor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

ABBREVIATIONS

AAAS............................................................ American Association for the Advancement of Science

AAEA........................................................................ Agricultural & Applied Economics Association

AARES......................................................... Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society

AAWE ............................................................................ American Association of Wine Economists

AEPP .............................................................................. Applied Economics Perspective and Policy

AERE .............................................................Association of Environmental and Resource Economists

AG............................................................................................................................. Agriculture

AG EC........................................................................................................Agricultural Economics

AJAE ............................................................................ American Journal of Agricultural Economics

AJARE ......................................................Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics

AME...................................................................................Agricultural and Managerial Economics

AOB-IV .........................................................................................Academic Offce Building No. 4

ARE........................................................................................Agricultural and Resource Economics

ASA ..............................................................................................American Statistical Association

BREAD..................................................Bureau for Research and Economics Analysis of Development

BS..................................................................................................................Bachelor of Science

CA&ES ...............................................................College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

CAES .............................................................................. Canadian Agricultural Economics Society

CSE.................................................................................................Consumer Subsidy Equivalents

DESP ..................................................................... Department of Environmental Science and Policy

DEV......................................................................................................................... Development

E&NR ....................................................................................Environmental and Natural Resources

EAAE......................................................................European Association of Agricultural Economists

EBM ................................................................................. Environmental Biology and Management

EDF .................................................................................................... Environmental Defense Fund

ENP ................................................................................Environmental Planning and Management

EPAP............................................................................. Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning

ERS ....................................Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture

ESP ....................................................................... Department of Environmental Science and Policy

FAO ..........................................................Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

FTE................................................................................................................. Full-Time Equivalent

GAC ....................................................................................... Graduate Administrative Committee

GARESC.......................................Giannini Agricultural and Resource Economics Student Conference

GMO ............................................................................................ Genetically Modifed Organism

GPC.............................................................................................. Graduate Program Coordinator

GRE ...............................................................................................Graduate Record Examinations

GSA............................................................................................... Graduate Students Association

GSM .......................................................................................... Graduate School of Management

I&R......................................................................................... Instruction and Department Research

IO............................................................................................................Industrial Organizations

IAAE .................................................................. International Association of Agricultural Economists

JARE........................................................................ Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics

MBA........................................................................................... Master of Business Administration

MS................................................................................................................... Master of Science

MSO................................................................................................Management Services Offcer

NAREA.............................................. Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association

NGO ..........................................................................................Non-Governmental Organization

NSLP ............................................................................................. National School Lunch Program

OECD ..................................................... Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

PhD ...............................................................................................................Doctor of Philosophy

PNG.............................................................................................................. Papua New Guinea

PSE ...................................................................................................Producer Subsidy Equivalents

RAE............................................................................................. Review of Agricultural Economics

SAEA .......................................................................... Southern Agricultural Economics Association

SNAP ............................................................................ Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

SS&H ...................................................................................Social Sciences & Humanities Building

TA .................................................................................................................... Teaching Assistant

UC............................................................................................................ University of California

UCB ......................................................................................................................... UC Berkeley

UCD............................................................................................................................. UC Davis

USAID ............................................................... United States Agency for International Development

USDA ................................................................................. United States Department of Agriculture

VERIP...........................................................................Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program

WAEA ..........................................................................Western Agricultural Economics Association

WIC............................ The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

At age 50 in 2015, the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE) at the University of California, Davis, has much to be proud of and celebrate, including the successful careers and manifold accomplishments of some 376 graduates through 2014, with another 87 in

the pipeline. Among the world’s PhD programs in agricultural and resource economics,

for decades the program at Davis has shared top billing with its sister program at

UC Berkeley, from which it began as an offshoot. During the 50 years since the program was

founded in 1964, much has changed in the world of agricultural and resource economics as well

as within the University of California, the Davis campus, the UC Agricultural Experiment Station,

the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CA&ES), and the broader community

including the city of Davis in which the campus sits. These various infuences have shaped and

colored the progress of the PhD program at UC Davis as it has progressively evolved into a very

different entity from the nascent program that produced its frst four graduates in 1967: Chauncey

Ching, Dustan Ireri, Ken Duft, and Samson Olayide.

This monograph documents the story of the ARE PhD program at UC Davis, paying attention to

the changes in the institutional setting in which the program is conducted, changes in the program

itself, and the causes of those changes; as well as the people, their lives, and their accomplishments,

including faculty and staff as well as the principal players—the graduates. In documenting this

history we have sought to capture the essence of the lives and times of the participants during—and

to some extent since—their time at Davis, dealing with the social life of the program as well as the

working life, which takes center stage for the most part.

The nature of the specifc foundations—that we came with the rest of the College of Agriculture

from Berkeley, in the frst instance, and were managed and directed from our sister department at

Berkeley at the outset—was an important infuence over the developments that followed. In Part 1:

Antecedents, Ancestors, and Institutional Infuences, we document and discuss these aspects, including

the key events, decisions, and signifcant steps taken during the frst years of transition to an

independent operation, which paved the way for subsequent development of the department and PhD

program at Davis. We also document the key developments subsequently in the UC, the Davis campus,

and the CA&ES as they shaped the development of the department and within it, the PhD program.

1

INTRODUCTION

In Part 2: The Department, we tell the story of the ARE department and its evolution over time,

highlighting the contrast, before and after 1994, which was a watershed year in many ways, with the

shift to a new building, the loss of a third of the faculty in very brief time (1990–1994), and some

structural changes to the PhD program. In addition to documenting the defning events and important

episodic changes such as these, we discuss and document the more evolutionary aspects and gradual

changes that to some extent drove the more obvious, big, episodic events. These included:

• the long-term decline in public (state and federal formula) funding for the Experiment

Station and Cooperative Extension as well as other shifts in funding, which meant a

progressive shift to the use of research grants rather than core funds to support research

assistants;

• changes in the size of the department’s undergraduate program, increasing from 545 majors

in 1995 to 1,096 in 2000, 1,435 in 2010 (including 349 pre-managerial economics), and

over 1,492 in spring quarter of 2016, with implications both for the demand for PhD

students as teaching assistants (and sometimes as associate instructors) and for the tension

between demands of the graduate program and the undergraduate program in decisions

about faculty hires;

• shifts in the primary felds of interest of the students and thus their demand for different

kinds of coursework and supervision, as well as funding; and

• changes in the curriculum and modus operandi within the PhD program.

Over its 50 years, the PhD program has involved participation by dozens of staff and faculty who

have played various roles that have contributed to the success of the program. Part 3: The Program

documents the details on these participants, who did what and when, and on the program itself, in

terms of the formal structure, the curriculum, requirements, numbers of participants, and funding.

These aspects involved some gradual processes and some large episodic changes, as did changes

in the department more broadly. These include transformations required to adapt to different

funding models; shifts in the ethnic and gender balance of the faculty and the students; shifts in the

emphasis of student interest, their dissertations and other research away from traditional agricultural

economics to resource, environmental, and development economics; and changes to the curriculum

in response to evolving demands of the students and the market.

Part 4: Accomplishments and Part 5: Life and Times of the Graduates aim to convey a richer sense

of what life was like for graduate students at Davis across the fve decades of the PhD program. We

document the overall achievement of the program in terms of the total numbers of our graduates

over time, their gender, nationality and ethnic mix, who they are, where they have ended up, how the

program infuenced their lives, and what they did at Davis and since. We also discuss achievements

of the graduates, including various laurels and other academic distinctions they have earned, senior

leadership positions they have held, and other professional accomplishments. Part 6: The Reunion

documents the PhD program’s 50th anniversary event.

2

PART 1: ANTECEDENTS, ANCESTORS, AND INSTITUTIONAL INFLUENCES

PART 1 Antecedents, Ancestors, and Institutional Infuences

Quad, East Hall,

North Hall, Creamery,

Judging Barn, circa 1908.

University Archives Photographs,

Special Collections, UC Davis Library.

Picnic Day Parade, circa 1920. University Archives Photographs, Special Collections, UC Davis Library.

3


Quad, North Hall, South Hall, undated. University Archives Photographs, Special Collections, UC Davis Library.

Creamery, East Hall,

North Hall, circa 1909–1911. University Archives

Photographs, Special Collections,

UC Davis Library.

4


Every story has to have a beginning and sometimes that beginning is stretched out over a long period and is complicated. Our early origins trace from the establishment of the University of California (UC) as a land-grant institution in the late 1860s. Agricultural Science and Agricultural Economics at the University of California began at Berkeley, and Davis

grew from that foundation. Having antecedents and ancestors at Berkeley shaped us in a number

of ways. In 1906 the University Farm at Davisville was established and it slowly morphed into a

UC Campus, which by 1959 was a General Campus of UC. Over that time and since, we became

progressively more independent from Berkeley, to be shaped more and more by infuences based

on the Davis campus.

The radical decentralization of UC in 1958–60 had further profound impacts on the least-

centralized UC enterprise—the university-wide College of Agriculture—on UC Davis, and on

Agricultural Economics. Prior to 1958, the University of California consisted of two general

campuses, Berkeley and UCLA, and a specialized medical campus in San Francisco. In 1958–59 three

specialized units were designated to become general campuses: Riverside in April 1959 (College of

Agriculture plus Citrus Experiment Station), Santa Barbara in September 1958 (former Normal

School), and Davis in October 1959 (Colleges of Agriculture and Letters & Science and the School

of Veterinary Medicine). Three additional campuses were approved in 1960 for Santa Cruz, Irvine,

and San Diego, making a total of nine. UC Merced was approved in 1995, and took its frst students

in 2006 to become the tenth campus.

Although now very much a creature of the Davis campus, our department remains a part of the

broader University of California—comprising 10 campuses, with 251,700 students, over 210,000

faculty and staff, and a budget of $28.7 billion in 2016.1 Agricultural Economics was the last feld

within the college to break from Berkeley, fnally becoming an independent department at Davis in

March of 1966, two years after our PhD program was approved. We came from Berkeley, refecting

what had been going on at Berkeley. To quote Loy Sammet, the Berkeley department chair who

oversaw the separation:

“Programmatic developments in Agricultural Economics at Berkeley were refected also

in the department’s activities at Davis. This was true in the undergraduate program frst

developed at Davis and in the PhD graduate program introduced there in 1964. This is not

surprising given the administrative and academic oversight from Berkeley and the fact that

nearly all the appointees in Agricultural Economics at Davis after WWII were recent PhD

recipients from the department at Berkeley.

1 http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/nov13/f6attach.pdf

5

http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/nov13/f6attach.pdf


With the passage of time, shifts in emphasis in the two-campus program appeared. …The

program at Berkeley progressively gave less attention to farm management and agricultural

marketing and more to resource, trade and policy issues. At Davis there was continued

emphasis on farm management, marketing and market structure; an increasing concern about

resource and policy matters; and a growing involvement in agribusiness management. At the

time of separation in 1966, the program at Davis was well on its way in the development of

the comprehensive program presently offered….”2

We inherited 13 members of faculty stationed at Davis (plus two Extension specialists) to offer

a newly minted PhD program (approved in February 1964) to about a dozen students, a Master of

Science (MS) in agricultural business management (approved in 1959) with about 30 students, and a

Bachelor of Science (BS) in agricultural economics (fully functional since the early 1950s) with about

100 undergraduate majors. There were 20 undergraduate courses and 10 graduate courses on the

books. We certainly did not start from scratch because we inherited fully developed core parts of a

traditional agricultural economics PhD program from Berkeley with a young faculty (with an average

age of 41 years) basically focused on farm management/production economics and marketing.

Our University of California Antecedents

The Agricultural and Resource Economics PhD program at UC Davis is cradled in the history of the

University of California as a land-grant university. What we are today is very much a function of how

we got here. If we had grown up in a different university, ours would be a very different department

and PhD program.

Under the Morrill Act of 1862 each state was entitled to a gift of federal lands, the proceeds from

the sale of which were to be used to establish a “People’s University” focused on “agriculture and the

mechanic arts” (hence the moniker still used in some places: A&M). The University of California

was established in 1868, frst offering classes in 1869 on the campus of the College of California

in Oakland. It moved to its own new campus in nearby Berkeley in 1873. The frst academic unit

established in 1869 was the College of Agriculture. Almost from the beginning there was a heated

debate between the frst professor of agriculture, Ezra Carr, and UC President Gilman over whether

the college should be a separate practical school devoted to helping new California farmers, or

a science-based teaching and research institution embedded in the university. The battle got the

attention of the state Legislature, which initiated an investigation. The upshot was that Gilman

resigned and Carr was fred. This led to the hiring of a new dean and professor of agriculture,

2 From March 1985, reprinted in W.E. Johnston and A.F. McCalla eds. A.P. Giannini and the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, 2009, p. 263.

6


Eugene Hilgard, a distinguished scientist who strongly believed that the college should be an integral

part of a quality scientifc institution. Hilgard was in place for 30 years (1875–1905) and, along

with President Benjamin Ide Wheeler (1899–1919), shaped the College of Agriculture as a premier

scientifc player in all felds of agricultural teaching and research. This is a defning legacy that has

indeed shaped us.

The battle over the mission—scientifc or practical—never went away and was rekindled in debate

over the establishment of the University Farm. As the college grew, it needed space for feld plots,

experimentation, and animal rearing. Berkeley, even in the 1880s and 1890s, was space-constrained

and too urban to serve as the location of an experimental farm. Further, it was in a climatic zone that

had little resemblance to any agricultural region in California except fog-prone coastal hills. A search

for a University Farm ensued, creating an intense competition as to where, in an already diversifed

agricultural state, it should be located. At one point there were over 70 competing locations. The

decision to create a University Farm also brought back the debate as to whether it should be a

separate practical college distinct from Berkeley.

In 1899 there emerged a persistent and persuasive protagonist for the farm, Peter J. Shields—

then secretary of the California State Agricultural Society (appointed a Judge in 1901)—who lobbied

hard for a Northern California site, preferably in the Sacramento Valley and in particular in Yolo

County. In 1905 the state Legislature passed a “University Farm Bill,” which provided funding for “a

special Agricultural Campus” and established a State Farm Commission to pick the site. Some of the

sites they were considering were in Yolo County, which led two prominent Davisville farmers, Jacob

La Rue and George Pierce, to persuade the Davisville Chamber of Commerce to take out an option

on the 730-acre Sparks ranch (which was part of the original Jerome Davis stock farm). In their

proposal to the commission, they proposed adding two additional tracts to make the total area nearly

780 acres, southwest of Davisville. The site was offered for an average price of just over $125/acre

with water rights thrown in. This was all playing out as Hilgard neared retirement. Edward Wickson,

who eventually succeeded Hilgard as dean, played a critical role in the fnal selection. In early 1906,

Governor Pardee accepted the Davisville offer, whereupon the owner, M.V. Sparks, auctioned off his

cattle and machinery and turned over the keys to the farm gate to Wickson.

Foundations and Evolving Infuences at Davis

On September 1, 1906, Dean Wickson opened the gate and “thus was born the University Farm”

(Scheuring, p. 19).(A symbolic reconstruction of the gate was dedicated in 1983, on the 75th anniversary

of the campus. It stands between Voorhies and Young halls.) Wooden buildings started going up in 1907:

The frst three were the Wyatt Pavilion, University House, and the Creamery. Also in 1907, Davisville

became the town of Davis. In 1908 the frst students arrived, to be housed in the newly fnished

7


North Hall. In 1909 a two-

year, non-degree Farm School

Program was established.

Also, some senior production

agricultural students from

Berkeley started spending their

fnal year(s) at Davis. It was

under this program that Edwin

C. Voorhies frst came to Davis

in 1914 as a member of the

Animal Husbandry Division.

Over the next 55 years,

much of the agricultural

research establishment at

Berkeley transferred to Davis,

with the most intense period of

transfer being post-World War

II. The frst transfers involved

people doing applied feld and

animal research. By the 1930s,

most Berkeley departments had

Davis branches, and by the end

of the 1950s many Berkeley

departments had closed and

completely moved to Davis.

Davis began offering its own four-year bachelor’s degree in 1938 and the frst graduates were granted

their degrees in 1948 (the campus was closed and turned over to the U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1943–

1945).

In 1952 a formal Davis College of Agriculture was founded and the frst dean, Fred Briggs, was

appointed. His college consisted of 17 departments, 10 joint with Berkeley, 645 undergraduates, 147

graduate students, 252 non-degree students, and 233 academic staff. Davis was heading out on its own.

Landmark Events in Our History

UC events and developments at Davis shaped our origins and continue to infuence us today,

along with the broader environment in which we operate. A variety of these events and forces

Two original buildings: Wyatt Livestock Judging Pavilion and The Creamery, 1907.

Re-creation of original campus gate, dedicated September 23, 1983, on UC Davis’ 75th Anniversary.

8


were critical as they infuenced the University of California, the Davis campus, the Department

of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and the PhD program, as we developed and massaged

it subject to these infuences. But in our history, two periods—a quarter century apart—of “big

bang” magnitude changes stand out: 1964–66 and 1991–94. The nature of each is summarized

here as a backdrop for the

more detailed histories of

the department and the

PhD program that follow

in subsequent sections.

The years 1964–66 saw

a confuence of signifcant

changes, each of which alone

would have been signifcant.

First, there was the need

to implement the new

PhD program: redesigning

courses already offered at

Davis and adding courses

that, under the old integrated

program, were taught by

Berkeley faculty in Berkeley;

using traditional networks

and advertisements to

solicit students for the

new program; setting up

admission standards and

procedures, and so on, to be

ready to admit students for

the academic year 1964/65.

Second, this process was

complicated by the fact that

the University of California

was switching from a

semester system to a quarter

system, effective fall 1966.

Box 1. Davis Campus Defning Events,1946–1980

1946 School of Veterinary Medicine approved, opened1948

1952 College of Letters and Science established; founding members were College of Agriculture faculty in the basic disciplines hired in previous years to teach Aggies

1956 Economics Department separated from a social science department, SAGE (Sociology, Anthropology, Government, and Economics)

October 1959 Davis becomes a General Campus of UC, Emil Mrak appointed chancellor

1960 The pace of development accelerates; enrollment 2,157 undergraduates plus 719 graduate students, to total 2,876

1961 The Graduate Division is created signaling independent administration of uniquely UC Davis graduate programs

1962 College of Engineering founded, drawing core faculty from the Department of Agricultural Engineering

1964 School of Law opened

Feb. 3, 1964 PhD in agricultural economics approved

1964/65 Economics PhD approved

1965/66 Home Economics Department is abolished and its teaching program is broken into its disciplinary components; consumer economics is transferred to Agricultural Economics

March 1966 Department of Agricultural Economics formally established

1966 School of Medicine opened; campus enrollment 8,916

1967 College of Agriculture is renamed College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CA&ES) at the culmination of a revolutionary revision of college teaching programs

1970s Explosive growth: enrollment increases from 12,941 in 1970 to 16,861 in 1975 and 18,370 in 1980

1970 Divisions of Biological Sciences (DBS) and Environmental Studies (DES) are established. DBS becomes College of Biological Sciences in 2005 and DES is absorbed into CA&ES in 1986

1979 Graduate School of Administration (now Graduate School of Management) is established

9


This required that all semester courses be completely restructured and revised, either by contraction

or division, to ft 10 weeks instead of 15.

The third was the splitting of the College of Agriculture budget. As part of Clark Kerr’s major

restructuring of UC, all instruction was decentralized to the newly expanded number of general

campuses, with the teaching budget—called Instruction and Department Research (I&R)—of the

individual campuses to be managed by campus chancellors. Implementing this restructuring was

a big task for the UC-wide College of Agriculture. The College had been run out of the President’s

Offce and administered by the UC dean of agriculture as a single budget. The college had

comingled teaching and Experiment Station funds, but now each department (indeed, each faculty

member) would be budgeted partly from campus funds and partly from Experiment Station funds.

A department’s choice in 1965 made a big difference subsequently, when teaching budgets doubled

in the early 1970s and the Experiment Station took a 10% cut in 1972. Some departments applied

the same split to their entire faculty but others gave each faculty member a unique split based on

individual teaching loads. Agricultural Economics chose to put more of its budget on the teaching

side and gave everyone the same split—43% in I&R using campus funds administered by the College

(A&ES) and 57% in Organized Research (OR) in the statewide Experiment Station. Resolving these

issues was a time-consuming task for a new department that formally was not approved until March

of 1966. And fourth, of course, came the non-trivial task of getting an independent Department of

Agricultural Economics up and running.

The next landmark period came a quarter century later. The early 1990s included several

momentous changes in Agricultural Economics at Davis, culminating in the watershed year of 1994.

This was the year of the third and fnal offering of the Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program

(VERIP-III), which was introduced as a desperate measure in a budgetary crisis that extended well

beyond UC Davis. When the dust settled, the three VERIPs had reduced the senior faculty by 10

professors; one-third of the department gone! In total, 13 faculty members left during the 1991–95

period while four were newly hired, so that the total number of academic senate faculty members in

the department was reduced by almost one-third—from 31 to 22.

1994 was also the year of moving out of Voorhies Hall, our comfortable home for 34 years,

into the Social Sciences & Humanities Building (SS&H). We had been promised larger individual

offces, a larger library, and better common areas; closer proximity to the Economics department;

and consolidation of the ARE department, including the graduate students (who had been housed

in AOB-IV) and ancillary elements (such as the Agricultural Issues Center and the Center for

Cooperatives).

10


We watched with increasing apprehension while the new building grew up as a prison: grey,

erratically shaped—a cement monster complete with guard towers and catwalks; the only things

missing were guards and machine guns. But it was worse inside: We had yet to experience how

dysfunctional the layout

would be with smaller offces,

small windows you could not

open, and faculty scattered

across even more wings and

foors than in Voorhies Hall.

Theoretically, we were going

to be reunited in the same

building with Economics, but

you could not get to them

without leaving the building

even though they were only

one foor down! It was a year

of trauma, which portended

changes in the power structure

of the department; a changing

of the guard had already begun

with a spate of new hires in the

late 1980s to be reinforced by

the shock of VERIP, and this

was compounded by other

stresses, including a series of

signifcant changes in the PhD

program. In the midst of all

this a new chair, Rich Sexton,

took offce on July 1, 1994.

Box 2. The Rise and Decline of Agricultural Science and Agricultural Economics in It

The land-grant college system with its associated Agricultural Experiment Stations was born about 150 years ago. It grew slowly for the frst 50 years and more. The big burst of growth in agricultural science in the middle years of the 20th century was accompanied by the emergence of agricultural (and, later, resource) economics departments and programs along with other specialisms within the colleges of agriculture, not just in the United States, but worldwide.

The growth of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Davis between 1965 and 1990 was mirrored all around the country and around the other high-income countries, with similar timing. Likewise, in the years since then, the same kinds of changes as have happened at Davis can be seen in the feld more generally. A natural question to ask is whether the concept of departments of “agricultural economics” or “agricultural and resource economics” has had its day.

Several sources of tension have colored the history and challenged the sustainability of the model of a separate department of agricultural economics located within a college of agriculture. First, political support and funding for agricultural science has been losing ground since the golden years of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Second, agricultural economists have been better funded than their counterparts in their sister economics departments, which causes resentment. Third, economists (along with other social scientists) have been an “odd-man-out” in colleges that are dominated by biological scientists, and this is made worse when the economists are better paid for reasons that only the economist can understand. Fourth, over time, the demand for undergraduate classes in agricultural and resource economics per se, along with the rest of the core agricultural science curriculum, has not kept pace with other demands.

In many places, including Davis, the ARE department has responded by providing undergraduate coursework in managerial and business economics. This development has led to tension between the undergraduate teaching mission and Experiment Station mission, with which the graduate program tends to be more closely aligned.

11

First UC Davis administration offce

building, undated. University Archives

Photographs, Special Collections,

UC Davis Library.

Students riding bicycles through the bicycle parking area, circa 1960. University Archives Photographs, Special Collections, UC Davis Library.

12

PART 2: THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL AND RESOURCE ECONOMICS

PART 2

The Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

13


Voorhies Hall, undated.

University Archives Photographs,

Special Collections, UC Davis Library.

Arboretum, Mrak Hall in the distance, circa 1976–1980. University Archives Photographs, Special Collections, UC Davis Library.

14


Agricultural Economics at Davis Begins

The history of Agricultural Economics at Davis begins with the history of Agricultural Economics at Berkeley—from which the campus, department, and PhD program at Davis were all spawned—as documented by Loy L. Sammet (1985).3 Prior to the mid-1960s, Agricultural Economics was conducted at Davis as a branch of the

department at Berkeley, to some extent with out-posted Berkeley faculty and students, but

progressively with faculty appointed to be stationed at Davis. The early emphasis was clearly on

production economics and farm management, and this was the subject of the frst agricultural

economics course offered at Davis, in 1929. Courses were offered regularly through the 1930s. Among

the teachers was, famously, John Kenneth Galbraith in 1933 who taught several courses at Davis

while a graduate student at Berkeley.

The campus was closed during

the years of World War II, 1943–

1945. In 1947 Trimble (Ted) R.

Hedges was the frst faculty member

hired in Agricultural Economics

at Berkeley and assigned to be at

Davis full-time. In 1949 and 1950,

two more members were added:

one, Jerry Foytik, was a new PhD

graduate in agricultural economics

from Berkeley; the other, James

Tinley, was a Berkeley full professor

who was transferred to Davis. In the

rest of the 1950s, 11 new faculty

members were hired for Davis (Chet

McCorkle, Herb Snyder, Ed Faris,

Russell Shaw, Fritz Mueller, Jerry

Dean, Gordy King, Steve Sosnick,

Box 3. Foundations of Agricultural Economics in the University of California

1875/76 First courses in political economy offered at Berkeley

1904/05 First course in the College of Letters explicitly addressing agriculture: American Agriculture: Leading Factors in the Development of Agriculture in the United States

1908/09 First course in the College of Agriculture: Farm Management and Farm Policies

1911/12 Two more new courses: Farm Management individual study and Farm Management Research

1915 Division of Rural Institutions is established

1920 Division of Farm Management is created

1925 These two are merged to create Division of Agricultural Economics, which becomes the Department of Agricultural Economics in 1948

1928 A.P. Giannini’s gift of $1.5 million leads to the establishment of The Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics

3 Reprinted in “Agricultural Economics in the University of California, Berkeley” in W.E. Johnston and A.F. McCalla eds. A.P. Giannini and the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, 2009.

15


Hal Carter, Allen Richards, and Ben French), and Ed Voorhies transferred from Berkeley. One of the

new hires (Mueller) left before the decade ended, such that net additions for the decade were 11

faculty plus two Extension specialists who were assigned to Davis (Doyle Reed and Philip Parsons).

Then, during the years 1960–1965, a further four new hires were added (Curtis Harris, Oscar Burt,

Warren Johnston, and Sam Logan), and one, D. Barton DeLoach, was transferred from UCLA when

the agriculture program at UCLA was closed. During the same years, four left (Shaw, Richards,

Harris, and Burt) and one retired (Tinley), leaving the total numbers unchanged.

The city of Davis was growing, too. Between 1950 and 1960, the population more than doubled

from 3,554 to 8,910, and in the next decade it more than doubled again, to 23,488. From then on,

the growth rate tapered off. It took 20 years for the population to double to 46,209 in 1990, and it

increased by less than that in the next 26 years, to over 66,000 in 2016.

25 Years of Growth and Consolidation, 1965–1990

When the PhD program became operational in 1964/65 and the new department was born in 1966,

the emphasis was on farm management, production, and marketing, as dictated by decisions from

Berkeley. Five faculty members were specialized in farm management/production economics, six

in marketing/demand analysis, one in land/resource economics, and one in resource economics/

land appraisal. The two Extension specialists were farm management

1965 • Campus enrollment:

7,723

• Major enrollment: 100

• ARE faculty: 13 professorial and 2 Extension specialists 4

economists.

The infuence of Berkeley was still strong, at least indirectly, even

after the break was made: seven of the 13 Davis faculty members and one

of the Extension specialists had their PhDs from Berkeley! Responsibility

for consumer economics was transferred to the department in 1965/66

with the abolition of the Department of Home Economics. Hiring

consumer economics faculty did not occur until 1969.

The subsequent years saw signifcant changes in both the subject matter emphasis of the faculty,

and where they were trained. Figure 1 shows total faculty members and Extension specialists in the

department over time. Figure 2 further disaggregates the faculty by primary feld of specialization.

The discussion that follows highlights the main events for each of the 10 fve-year periods in the

evolution of the department and the faculty; the corresponding discussion of the PhD program is

presented later.

4 Enrollment data throughout this section is from: http://budget.ucdavis.edu/data-reports/enrollment-reports.html

16

http://budget.ucdavis.edu/data-reports/enrollment-reports.html

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

1965–6

9

1970–7

4

1975–7

9

1980–8

4

1985–8

9

1990–9

4

1995–9

9

2000–0

4

2005–0

9

2010–1

4


In the University of California, departmental leadership is provided by department chairs

usually selected from the faculty to serve for three to fve years. Chairs are recommended by the

dean and appointed by the chancellor. The department’s founding chair was Ben French, who

served just four months at the end of his fve-year term as vice-chair of the Berkeley department

responsible for Davis. Herb Snyder took over as the frst full-term chair on July 1, 1966, and served

until June 30, 1970.

Figure 1. The Evolving Agricultural Economics Faculty, 1965–2015

40

35

Extension Faculty Academic Faculty

Num

ber

of F

acul

ty 30

25

20

15

10

5

0

Figure 2. The Evolution of Faculty Research, 1965–2015†

100% 90% 80% 70% Other 60% Development 50% Natural Resource 40% & Environment 30% Agriculture

20% 10% 0%

† In this fgure and in other places we have allocated individual faculty members to particular primary felds of specialization (or occasionally among several) based on our best guess, but knowing that whatever we do will be wrong in particular because the emphasis in many instances has changed over time. Specifc results should therefore be interpreted with some care, though the general indications are likely to be on target.

17


Table 1. Department Chairs Department Chair Period of Service Comments

Ben French† March 1, 1966 – June 30, 1966 Founding Chair

Herb Snyder July 1, 1966 – June 30, 1970 First Full-Term Chair

Hal Carter July 1, 1970 – June 30, 1976

Ben French July 1, 1976 – June 30, 1981 Second Term

Warren Johnston July 1, 1981 – June 30, 1986

Hal Carter/Gordy King July 1, 1986 – June 30, 1989 Second Term for Carter

Hoy Carman July 1, 1989 – June 30, 1994

Rich Sexton July 1, 1994 – June 30, 1998

Colin Carter July 1, 1998 – June 30, 2001

Jim Chalfant July 1, 2001 – August 31, 2005

Richard Howitt September 1, 2005 – September 30, 2011

Rich Sexton October 1, 2011 – June 30, 2016 Second Term

Rachael Goodhue July 1, 2016 –

† Ben was vice-chair of the combined department until March 1966 when the department at Davis was created. He then served as the founding chair March to June 1966.

1966–70

Ten new faculty members were added (fve in 1970 alone) in areas that diversifed the department: two

were in consumer economics (Sylvia Lane and Edith Parker); two primarily in econometrics and other

quantitative methods (Gordon Rausser and Quirino Paris); two in labor (Ted Lianos and Varden Fuller);

two in agricultural policy and trade (Alex McCalla and Elmer Learn); one in resource economics (David

Hansen); and one in marketing (Hoy Carman); some also had interests in development economics

(Hansen and McCalla). But one production economist (Faris) left, such

that the net gain for the period was nine faculty members, and one

Extension specialist (marketing) was hired (Leon Garoyan), bringing the

total establishment to 22 faculty members and three Extension specialists

in 1970. Three of the faculty hires were senior full professors: Sylvia Lane,

our frst consumer economist and our frst female faculty member; Elmer

Learn, recruited by the chancellor as executive vice-chancellor, became

a member of the faculty, but did not teach until much later; and Varden

Fuller transferred from Berkeley.

1971–75

The department was under new leadership from Chair Hal Carter for the entire period. An additional

seven new faculty members were added (fve in 1975 alone), including three in consumer issues

1970

• Campus enrollment: 12,941

• ARE faculty: 22 professorial and 3 Extension specialists

• City of Davis population: 23,488

18


and fnance (John Kushman, Lor Shepard, and

Barbara Zoloth), and one each in agribusiness (Daryl

Carlson), econometrics (Richard Green), farm labor

(Will Rochin), and resources (Richard Howitt), but

with no net gain since three left (Rausser, Lianos, and

Parker), three retired (Hedges, DeLoach, and Fuller)

and one died (Jerry Dean). Three Extension specialists

were hired: two in marketing (Jim Cothern and James

Youde), and one in small

farms (Des Jolly) but one

retired (Parsons) such

that the net gain was

two. By 1975, then, the

total establishment of the

department had almost

1975



doubled in size in the 10 years since foundation, to a

total of 27, including still 22 ladder faculty and now

fve Extension specialists.

1976–80

Ben French returned as chair in 1976 to lead the

department during this period. The late 1970s

was a period of further

consolidation, with a focus

on farm production and

resources. An additional

eight new faculty members

were added, including

two each in production

economics (Rulon Pope

and John Antle) and

1980




resource economics (Del Gardner and Jim Wilen), and one

each in agricultural fnance (Robert Collins), managerial

economics (Peter Farquhar), farm labor (Phil Martin), and

econometrics (Art Havenner). The net gain in the faculty

was fve, since three left (Carlson, Pope, and Farquhar),

Box 4. Hiring Our Own Graduates

In the early 1970s, the department had its frst of many debates about hiring our own graduates. Gordon Rausser enrolled as a PhD student in 1965/66 and, while still working on his own dissertation, became a candidate for our vacant econometrics position. This generated a serious faculty discussion about whether a current graduate student could teach his fellow students PhD econometrics, and more seriously should we, at such an early stage of our PhD program, be hiring our own? There were strongly held views about inbreeding, considered to have been a problem at Berkeley and Minnesota and probably many other places. Others argued Gordon was so good that he would be a great advertisement of the quality of our program if he went to a big name school and did well.

When the dust settled, Gordon was hired as an acting assistant professor in 1969 and upon completion of the PhD in 1971, the acting title was removed and he was advanced to the top step of assistant professor. He was granted tenure in 1972. In 1973, he was offered (and ultimately accepted) a full professorship at Iowa State. Eventually he returned in 1978/79 to Berkeley where he served three terms as department chair and two terms as dean of the College of Natural Resources.

The issue of hiring our own has come up many times since. The next round involved the hiring of Richard Howitt in 1975. We hired Chris Heaton in 1981, but she decided instead to get another PhD and never took up the position. Debates in the 1990s ended in stalemates. The next case was bringing back Shermain Hardesty (PhD 1984) in 2002 as an Extension specialist. The most recent cases were Pierre Mérel in 2007 and Tina Saitone (Cooperative Extension) on June 1, 2016.

19


while one Extension (farm management and production) specialist (Kent Olson) was added, one left

(Youde), and one retired (Reed), making the total establishment 31, including now 27 ladder faculty

members and back to four Extension specialists.

1981–85

A new chair, Warren Johnston, took over on July 1, 1981, and led the department until mid-1986. During

the early 1980s, six new members of faculty were added, generally with an off-farm emphasis. They included

four in agricultural marketing, consumer economics, and demand analysis 1985 (Fran Antonovitz, Dale Heien, Richard Sexton, and Tom Hazlett), one in

• Campus enrollment: quantitative methods (Ray Nelson), and one in development economics (Tu 19,337

Jarvis). But three retired (Foytik, Lane, and Snyder) and three left (Collins, • Major enrollment: 500 Zoloth, and Nelson), so the total remained at 27 faculty members. In addition,

• ARE faculty: 27 three Extension specialists were added with an emphasis on production professorial and 4

(Klonsky and Siebert) or marketing (Cook), while one retired (Garoyan) and Extension specialists two left (Siebert and Olson), leaving the total at four.

1986–90

A new surge of growth marked the late 1980s. A total of 10 new faculty members were hired: fve in

the area of natural resource and environmental economics (Oscar Burt, Cathy Kling, Mike Caputo,

Gloria Helfand, and Doug Larson; also, a sixth, John Loomis, in the Department of Environmental

Science and Policy), four in the area of agricultural policy and international trade (Colin Carter, Rob

Innes, Julian Alston, and Marilyn Whitney), and one in labor/development economics (Ed Taylor).

The net gain in the faculty was only four, since six left or retired in the same period (Hansen, Kushman,

Gardner, Antle, Antonovitz, and King). Two of the new hires were hired at a more senior level with

tenure: Oscar Burt (returning after having spent 22 years at Montana State University) as a senior

1990




full professor and Colin Carter as an associate professor. Meanwhile, one

Extension specialist retired (Cothern) but another two were hired (Bees

Butler, dairy, and Steve Blank, fnance). During this period, Hal Carter

again served as chair from July 1, 1986, to June 30, 1989. Gordy King

served as Hal’s co-chair. Hoy Carman was appointed chair on July 1, 1989.

The year 1990 marks a crucial point in this history. The department

had reached a peak of nearly three times its original number of faculty

members, with a total establishment now including 31 ladder faculty and

fve Extension specialists. The mixture was quite different, too. The emphasis had defnitely shifted away

from farm production economics—as recorded in the famous quote from John Antle when he left for

20


Montana State in 1987, saying: “There are only two and a half production economists at Davis, and one of

them is leaving.” The total of 36 ladder faculty members and Extension specialists included fve women.

25 Years of Adaptation, 1991–2015

Growth and diversity sometimes comes at a cost. This period saw the beginning of tensions among

the faculty, refecting in part a greater diversity of types of economists in terms of their ambitions

and energy, as well as in their felds of focus, and a shift of the balance among types. The large

infux of energetic and talented new faculty members added new vigor to the department but also

put increased pressure on the faculty as a whole to become more productive. This was refected in

rising tensions in the merit and promotion review processes. The faculty was also becoming more

diverse in terms of perceptions about the collective purpose and expectations for participation in the

department and its programs, as well as individual productivity.

While faculty numbers grew, driven to a great extent by growth in undergraduate student

numbers, Experiment Station and Extension funding from both state and federal sources contracted,

and regular fnancing available to support faculty research progressively shrank. Departmental

funding for research assistants had virtually disappeared by 1990. A new era of faculty needing to

obtain extramural funds to fnance their research and support graduate students had begun and

was soon to become dominant, after the budget crisis of the early 1990s. Over the longer term, the

funding changes led to an increase in the I&R (teaching) share of new appointments and, ultimately,

a rebalancing of the I&R share for all faculty members.

The early 1990s was a period of very tight budgets—and not just in California. State support to the

university was substantially reduced, a trend that had begun in the 1980s, and UC needed to reduce

its budget by 25 percent. UC adopted an economically absurd policy of encouraging early retirement

by granting additional years (eventually, a maximum of eight additional years) of retirement credit

to those members of faculty who opted to retire under the Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Plan

(VERIP).5 The incentives were powerful for those who were eligible, and the logic inescapable (for

the great majority, at least). Consequently, over just a few years, VERIP reduced the total UC faculty

by well over 20 percent.6 Our department was not spared.

5 Details on the history of the UC retirement system including the various VERIPs can be found here: http://ucrpfuture.universityofcalifornia.edu/fles/2010/09/peb_ax_l-13-ucrs-historical-perspective_0910.pdf

6 “Ultimately these programs would result in the retirement of more than 10,000 UC staff and nearly 2,000 tenured UC faculty members—the latter group representing more than 20 percent of all regular UC faculty” (p. 2 Notice Vol. 25, No. 1 October 2001). Later in the same publication, actual numbers of faculty retiring are cited as VERIP I, 675; VERIP II, 1,371; VERIP III, 938, implying a total of 2,984, which is closer to 30 percent, and the Division of Agricultural Sciences lost over 30 percent.

21

http://ucrpfuture.universityofcalifornia.edu/files/2010/09/peb_ax_l-13-ucrs-historical-perspective_0910.pdf


1991–95

VERIP captured a total of 10 members of our faculty with its increasingly seductive incentives; all

but two department members over the age of 56 took the program and retired (French, H. Carter,

Burt, Logan, Johnston, Rochin, McCalla, McCorkle, Sosnick, and Learn). In addition, we saw three

resignations (Innes, Kling, and Loomis). Of these 13, seven became fellows of the Agricultural &

Applied Economics Association (AAEA).

Four new hires included some senior appointments, mostly in agricultural marketing and policy

areas, which partly compensated for the loss of senior faculty through the VERIP. These included a

“normal” replacement (Garth Holloway); a transfer of a tenured associate professor from Berkeley (Jim

1995


• Major enrollment: 545


Chalfant); the foundation appointment of a senior full professor (Dan

Sumner) to the department’s frst endowed chair position (the Frank H.

Buck, Jr. Chair), which the faculty opted to fll externally rather than

from within its own ranks; and a full professor (Cathy Morrison Paul, a

production economist). Even so, the net loss was nine, reducing the faculty

to 22; a great loss of human capital. Hoy Carman chaired the department

through this turbulent period, stepping down on June 30, 1994. Rich

Sexton took over as chair of a much smaller department on July 1, 1994.

The transition from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s represented a massive transformation of

the faculty. A total of 14 new hires over this 10-year period were more than offset by a total of 20

resignations or retirements, for a net loss of six. At the end of this process, none of the founding

faculty members from 1965 remained, and some elements of the old departmental culture and

identity were lost.

The VERIP resulted in a tremendous loss of wisdom and experience and institutional knowledge

(283 years of experience in the department, with a heavier emphasis on traditional agricultural

economics felds relative to the areas of more recent growth). The other resignations fell

disproportionately in another direction, because the loss of Cathy Kling was compounded by the

resignation of John Loomis, leaving only two environmental economists on the campus.

In 1995 the department changed its name to the Department of Agricultural and Resource

Economics, refecting the evolving balance of the faculty, students, and their interests, and in keeping

with a national trend to change the names of departments, professional associations, scholarly

journals, and other organizations to broaden them away from and weaken the links to agriculture.

The drift of the balance of the department has continued in that direction.

22


1996–2000

Funding recovered somewhat in the latter 1990s, and four new faculty members were appointed,

including a full professor as the foundation appointment to the Daniel Barton DeLoach endowed

chair (Jeffrey Williams, commodity markets), a tenured associate professor (Scott Rozelle,

development economics), and two assistant professors (Hossein Farzin, resource economics, and

Rachael Goodhue, agricultural marketing).

These gains were offset by the loss of four faculty members who resigned (Whitney, Helfand,

Hazlett, and Holloway). The closure of the Food Research Institute at Stanford was serendipitous in

making Williams and Rozelle available to us, which was timely in facilitating a burst of activity at

Davis related to development economics in China, in particular. The net outcome was to leave us

still with a total of 22 faculty and fve Extension specialists. Rich Sexton stepped down as chair on

June 30, 1998, to be replaced by Colin Carter, who served into the new century, stepping down on

June 30, 2001.

Partly as a consequence of the budget pressures in the early- to

mid-1990s, the Graduate School of Management (GSM) threatened to

introduce a new undergraduate business major, to compete directly

with our undergraduate program. This gave rise to concern within

ARE because enrollment in the agricultural and managerial economics

(AME) major supported many faculty and staff positions in ARE and

provided employment and funding for many of our PhD students. In

response, ARE dropped “agricultural” and thus changed the name of its

major to managerial economics in 1999. The name change contributed

to the increase in enrollment from 804 in 1998, to 1,080 in 1999, and

2000


• Major enrollment: 1,196



1,196 in 2000.

2001–05

Only two new faculty members were hired, one econometrician (Aaron

Smith) and one development economist (Steve Boucher), and Shermain

Hardesty joined the department as director of the Center for Cooperatives

(half-time) and Extension specialist (half-time).

Two members of faculty retired (Heien and Shepard) and one resigned

(Caputo), making for a net loss of one, and leaving us with a total of 21

faculty members and six Extension specialists. (These numbers do not

include Steve Vosti, who joined us as a research associate in 1999 and

2005


• Major enrollment: 739 (plus 277 pre-ME)


23


was appointed as an assistant adjunct professor in 2001, and has since been promoted to adjunct

professor.)

Enrollment in the major continued to grow, but additional full-time equivalent (FTE) faculty to

teach these students were not forthcoming and we were advised to “manage enrollment.” This we

did, by introducing a minimum GPA requirement, which caused hundreds of students to divert to

economics, which helped for a time, but nevertheless, the ratio of managerial economics majors to

ARE faculty remained signifcantly higher than before the change in name of the major.

Jim Chalfant was chair from July 1, 2001, until August 30, 2005, when Richard Howitt assumed

offce. Howitt served until September 30, 2011.

2010


• Major enrollment: 784 (plus 350 pre-ME)



2015

• Campus enrollment in fall 2015–16: 36,104

• Major enrollment: 1,492 in spring quarter 2016


• City of Davis population: 66,742 (2014)

2006–10

Five new faculty members were hired across a range of felds including

environmental and resource economics (Cynthia Lin, jointly with ESP,

and Katrina Jessoe), development economics (Travis Lybbert; and

Michael Carter, hired as a senior full professor to fll the gap caused by

the loss of Rozelle, who resigned), and agricultural economics (Pierre

Mérel). These were offset by one retirement (Carman) and one death

(Cathy Morrison Paul), so the net gain was three. One Extension

specialist also retired (Jolly).

2011–15

Three new faculty members were hired across felds including energy

economics (Kevin Novan), econometrics (Dalia Ghanem), and

agricultural marketing (Tim Beatty, appointed as a tenured associate

professor), but these were more than offset by four retirements (Farzin,

Howitt, Havenner, and Martin). One Extension specialist resigned

(Blank) and one retired (Klonsky).

Rich Sexton returned for a second period as chair on October 1,

2011, and served through June 30, 2016. Professor Quirino Paris and

Extension Specialist Roberta Cook retired June 30, 2016.7

7 Four new faculty members have joined the department since spring quarter of 2015: Kristin Kiesel as a lecturer with security of employment, Ashish Shenoy as an assistant professor, Jens Hilscher as an associate professor, and Tina Saitone as an Extension specialist.

24


The department in 2015 was very different from its fedgling form in 1965. Having begun with

13, it grew to a peak of 31 (professorial ranks) faculty members in 1990 but has numbered in the

low twenties since 1994, as it was in the early 1970s, while the Extension cohort is also down by

more than half from its peak of six specialists.

Over the years, ARE

faculty have served in

many administrative roles

on campus (See Box 5).

The total faculty count is

about the same as it was

in 1975, but enrollment in

our undergraduate major

has roughly tripled (while

total enrollment on the

campus has doubled) and

the graduate program has

also grown, including a

large master’s program in

conjunction with the PhD

program that is the main

focus of this monograph.

The composition of

the faculty has changed

markedly, compared with

the founding group, to

be more diverse in many

dimensions. It is generally

older (average age 54 in

2015 compared with 41

in 1965), though with

a greater range of ages,

more international, more

female, and more likely

to have a PhD in general

economics rather than

Box 5. Administrative Roles Taken by ARE Faculty ARE faculty members have served the University of California in a variety of roles entailing signifcant responsibilities outside the department in addition to their regular faculty roles.

Chet McCorkle: • Vice-chancellor of academic affairs UCD, 1964–69 • Dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

(CA&ES), 1969/70 • Senior vice-president UC system, 1970–78

Elmer Learn: • Executive vice-chancellor UCD, 1969–84

Alex McCalla: • Associate dean, graduate division UCD, 1968/69 • Dean, CA&ES UCD, 1970–75 • Founding dean, Graduate School of Administration

(now Management, GSM), 1979–81

Sam Logan: • Associate dean, graduate studies and research UCD, 1974–78

Del Gardner: • Last externally recruited director of the Giannini Foundation, UC,

1976–82

Lee Garoyan: • Founding director, UC Center for Cooperatives, 1978–83

Hoy Carman: • Associate dean, CA&ES UCD, 1983–86

Lor Shepard: • Vice-chancellor of university relations UCD, 1985–89

Hal Carter: • Founding director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center, 1985–96

Dan Sumner: • Director, UC Agricultural Issues Center, 1997–

Tu Jarvis: • Divisional associate dean, CA&ES UCD, 1999–2009 • Director, Blum Center for Developing Economies, 2010–

Michael Carter: • Director, BASIS Assets and Market Access Collaborative Research

Support Program (AMA CRSP), 2012–

25

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

0.7 0.6

0.5


1.0Figure 3. 40 0.9 An Increasingly 35 0.8

30

25 Diverse Faculty

(Demographics), 1965–2015 Extension Faculty N

umbe

r of

Fac

ulty

20

0.4 15 0.3

10 Academic Faculty 0.2 Share of Faculty 5 0.1 with Ag Econ PhD

0 0.0 Share of Faculty Working on Agriculture Share of Faculty with Berkeley PhD

2013

2007

2010

2001

2004

1995

1998

1989

1992

1983

1986

1977

1980

1971

1974

1965

1968

Figure 4. An Increasingly Diverse Faculty

(Gender), 1965–2015

Female Academic Female ExtensionMale Extension

Male Academic

40 30 20 10 0 10 Number of Faculty

Figure 5. 30 An Increasingly 25 Diverse Faculty

Num

ber

of F

acul

ty

20 (Domestic vs.

15International), 1965–2015 10

5

Year

s of

Age

Pe

rcen

t

Domestic Faculty Average Age

International Faculty 0

26

53

48

43

33