Agricultural economics: a discipline in crisis?

Melissa Van der Merwe

Agrekon, 2023, vol. 62, issue 2

Abstract: Agricultural economists have continuously raised questions about their role in the wider economy and society since the discipline's establishment. This led to continuous reinvention, development and stretching of the discipline's boundaries. We have seen the same critique by scholars in other disciplines; many of these evolved to thrive or regressed to die. This begs the question, is the agricultural economics discipline evolving and adapting to change or regressing and facing extinction? To answer this evolutionary question, I use the three key pillars that make up the hereditary material of a discipline as a conceptual framework: research, teaching and association. I use several data sets to diagnose the health of each of these pillars to ultimately comment on the health of the discipline. Our findings indicate the weakest pillar as the association. Although our research and teaching pillars are not as strong as we want them to be, we are in the process of reinforcement. In conclusion, the agricultural economics discipline is not in crisis, at least not yet. I also acknowledge that the emergence of crisis does not always lead to the end of a discipline, but it promotes educational reflection and reform to lead to disciplinary evolution.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies; Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/348188/files/A ... 20in%20crisis%20.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:agreko:348188

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.348188

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Agrekon from Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().