February 2016 Issue 4

Member Profile:

What motivated you to pursue Agricultural/Applied Economics as a profession?
My father works for the agricultural division of my hometown's local government office in China. As part of his job, he visited rural farms to conduct field surveys, and would occasionally let me tag along when I was in high school. These trips with my dad taught me that these poor farmers are often taking life-or-death financial risks on an annual basis. Coming to grips with this fact led me to study agricultural economics as a career.
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Call for Applications for the Mentorship Program: Mentee's and Mentor's

As a mentee, you are given the following opportunities to enhance your career:

• Identify successful mentoring connections.
• Gain professional support during career development, advancement and transition.
• Develop important relationships and contacts across AAEA, Academia and Industry.

The AAEA Mentoring Program promises to be an exciting and rewarding journey for all involved. We encourage all AAEA members to participate.
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2016 AAEA Annual Meeting EXECON Pre-conference Workshop
The “How-To” of Experimental Economics in Agricultural, Environmental & Applied Research

Hosted by the new Experimental Economics Section, the objective of this AAEA pre-conference workshop is to teach how to run economic experiments. The primary purpose is to contribute to the attendees’ understanding of the research methods and tools for using experimental economics to analyze individual decision-making. The workshop program includes three speakers who will help provide the nuts-and-bolts details of running an experiment.
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Renew Your AAEA Membership for 2016

You can now renew your AAEA membership for 2016 on the AAEA website. Simply log in to the “My Account” section to renew. Completing your renewal online saves you time by filling out most of the information for you automatically.

The benefits of your AAEA membership only last through the spring of 2016, so be sure to renew soon to ensure that you keep receiving services from AAEA throughout the upcoming year.

2016 Teaching, Learning, and Communication (TLC) Section: Graduate Student Teaching Award 

The TLC Section is an active group of AAEA members interested in the theory, scholarship, and practice of learning, teaching, and communication. Given that a large majority of AAEA members have responsibilities in these three areas, the TLC section's activities are developed to enhance members’ skills in the on-campus classroom, off-campus workshop, and in a presentation to a community group.
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Update from the Food Safety & Nutrition (FSN) Section

Looking back at 2015- it was a great year for our section! We sponsored a successful post-conference workshop on "Applying Behavioral and Experimental Economics to Food and Agri-Environmental Issues", co-organized 10 track sessions and one invited paper session. Thus, we have great plans for the 2016 Annual Meetings and we look forward to sharing more details about our track sessions and planned events with you over the coming months. You may already mark your calendars for the FSN Breakfast and Business meeting, which will take place on Sunday morning, July 31 at 9:30 AM. If you are not a member of our section (yet), we would like to encourage you to stop by this event. We are looking forward to seeing newcomers and regulars. Members in our section address a wide range of research topics in the areas of food safety, nutrition, and health economics.
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Other News

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Invitation-only Conference

The National Bureau of Economic Research seeks junior AAEA members for attendance at the by-invitation-only conference, “The Economics of Asset Accumulation and Poverty Traps”. June 28-29, 2016, in Washington, D.C.
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Call for Papers: 12th Annual Meeting of the International Water Resource Economics Consortium (IWREC)
September 11-13, 2016 at The World Bank, Washington, D.C.

The 12th Annual Meeting of the International Water Resource Economics Consortium (IWREC) will be hosted by the World Bank in Washington, DC on September 11-13, 2016. The overall theme of the meeting is “Water Security in a Changing World.”
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5th AAAE Conference

The African Association of Agricultural Economists invites you to participate during its 5th International Conference in Addis Ababa. The theme of the conference is “Transforming smallholder agriculture in Africa: The role of policy and governance.” The meeting will take place at the United Nations Conference Centre - Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from September 23-26, 2016.
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152th EAAE Seminar:
Emerging Technologies and the Development of Agriculture
At the beginning of the 21st century, analysts have started to raise concerns about the worldwide slowdown of agricultural supply growth in the presence of a strong rising demand for food but also, increasingly, for energy purposes. Hence, in the past decade the issue of global food security has received increased scrutiny and various responses on how to feed the world over the next 50 years have been proposed. One possible response is to increase agricultural productivity in a sustainable way that is increasing production while limiting negative impacts on natural resources and the environment. Obviously developments in production technologies in agriculture play a key role in this perspective.
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Priorities and Solutions Update

Looking for Your Opinion about Priorities and Solutions
What are high-priority research questions for agricultural and applied economists as we address the big challenges facing society? How will we train our students to help answer these questions? How will we engage with other disciplines? What outreach and extension education will be needed?

We need your ideas about these important questions and how answering them will make a difference. Over the next few days you will receive an email about the survey, and we encourage you to respond as soon as possible.
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Government Relations Update

• DC Update – President’s Budget
• Upcoming Events
• Recent Events
• Funding Opportunities