
O’Neill School faculty help shape the world through their research, their teaching, and by sharing their expertise with communities. Associate Professor Jerome Dumortier now has a direct line to help curate the future of agricultural and environmental policy knowledge, thanks to his new position as editor for the journal Applied Economic Perspectives of Policy—the policy journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
“I was extremely excited to be selected for the editorship position,” he recalls. “I’m an avid reader of AEPP and have published two articles in it myself. For me, being selected shows that they appreciate my expertise and my reputation in the field of agricultural economics.”
Dumortier plans to use that expertise to help shape the journal’s future and strategic direction through the research published in the journal.
“There is little doubt that U.S. and global agriculture will undergo major changes in the near future to satisfy not only food consumption but contribute to climate change mitigation, ecosystem services, and much more,” Dumortier says. “I want to see AEPP at the forefront of this development.”
In the past, Dumortier says, the association and the journal were focused on traditional agricultural topics like livestock and crop production. But they’re shifting to include issues that examine the relationship between agriculture, the environment, and energy production, as well as the role agriculture plays in climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystem services.
That shift is where Dumortier comes in. It’s why he feels a sense of responsibility to help advance the journal’s mission and the O’Neill School’s reputation.
“They picked someone who does agricultural economics but who does that within a policy school,” he explains. “O’Neill is already well established in the environmental policy space, but we’re now expanding into agricultural policy as well.”
Dumortier says he’s excited to see what other researchers are working on, the impactful topics that are trending, and the findings that will help shape agriculture policy in the future.
He also hopes to expand readership and authorship of the journal. Right now, he says a majority of the journal’s authors are from the United States, but he stresses there are many important topics coming out of Latin America, Europe, and other parts of the world as well.
“We want to try to pull those authors to appear in our journal to expand our knowledge base and our audience,” he explains. “If we want to diversify our collective knowledge in this field, we must also diversify the voices being presented.”