EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Agricultural economics: a discipline in crisis?

Melissa Van der Merwe

Agrekon, 2023, vol. 62, issue 2, 117-132

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.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03031853.2023.2186003 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: Agricultural economics: a discipline in crisis? (2023) Downloads
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:taf:ragrxx:v:62:y:2023:i:2:p:117-132

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ragr20

DOI: 10.1080/03031853.2023.2186003

Access Statistics for this article

Agrekon is currently edited by A. Jooste, National Agricultural Marketing Council

More articles in Agrekon from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:62:y:2023:i:2:p:117-132