Changing of the Guard: Discussion

The authors in this session recognize that the future of our profession depends on the economic education and analysis we are willing and able to supply and on the information demanded by our clientele. However, the authors could have devoted more attention to factors underlying the demand for our services and to our ability to translate supply and demand for our services into essential professional resources. Brandt and Ahearn focus mainly on the supply side-the changing composition of the profession. They note that over half of the young men and three-fourths of the young women in the profession do not have farm backgrounds. Most of those professionals are not working on commercial farm marketing and production economics. This is quite a departure for a profession once comprised mostly of white males with farm backgrounds working on commercial farm marketing and production economics. Brandt and Ahearn call for recruitment of more nonwhites and females into the profession. I have no problem with that as long as we continue to pursue excellence. "Cultural diversity" becomes another name for racism or sexism when it is defined as setting a (suitably low) qualification hurdle and then giving preference to minorities or women from the list who qualify. Brandt and Ahearn failed to mention the sharply rising proportion of foreign graduate students. American graduate student numbers are likely to continue to slip. Consequently, I anticipate increased hiring of foreign PhDs. to fill domestic faculty vacancies. In their brief conclusion, Brandt and Ahearn say that they expect current emphasis on peer review and disciplinary orientation to give way to multidisciplinary research responding to user views. They give few clues why this will happen, but hint that a supply of culturally diverse professionals might create their own demand. My observation is that the profession trains and rewards ever narrower disciplinary specialists, less and less willing or able to solve real world problems and effectively communicate the results to the public. These magnificent disciplinary specialists write mostly for each other. Unn vehr addresses demand-side issues, especially suburbanization, the skewed distribution of income, and the declining importance of farms. Offutt also notes the influence of suburbanization on our future. I feel that the future of o r profession depends on how well we serve the interests of students, food producers and consumers, rural Americans, and the public at large. We will need to provide sufficiently sound education and analysis of the food system, resources, and the environment to be viewed by society as worth retaining as a profession. We all agree with Offutt's observation that fewer of our profession's resources will go into traditional areas of agriculture. I and others in the profession who bear many scars from questioning the economic wisdom of current commodity programs are appalled by Offutt's statement that "the profession has done little to illuminate or move the terms of debate (about commodity programs) away from marginal analysis of the status quo. " Being candid about commodity programs has not endeared us to many of our traditional clientele. The thesis of the remainder of this discus-