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FAO FOCUS: PARTNERSHIP PROGRAMMES |
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Academics/ Research |
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Interview with Milton Boyd, Professor of Agricultural Economics
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What made you decide to come to FAO?
As a professor, every five years I have the option of going elsewhere to study for a year in order to get a new perspective for the classroom and do research. A lot of professors from our university go to other universities, government, or the private sector. But I decided to come to FAO, as I wanted an international perspective for a year that I could take back to my students. I also wanted to go to a place where I could make a research contribution in my field of study, so FAO worked out well for me.
What have you been working on at FAO?
I was fortunate to work on a project in my area of specialization, called price transmission. The project covers Central Europe, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Poland and Hungary. The idea is to look at agricultural prices across these countries statistically and see how they compare to world prices. For example, when the wheat price goes up in the United States, the price should go up in Poland by roughly the same amount, if there is good price transmission. With good price transmission a country can take better advantage of international trade opportunities. However, if they are unable to get their policies and prices in line with world prices, there may be problems. They may be unable to join organizations like the World Trade Organization and they risk being left behind the rest of the world and worse off.
Do you feel that you have filled a gap in FAO expertise?
I hope I've been able to make a contribution at FAO in terms of emphasizing the importance of price in agriculture. In the past, many economies in the world were centrally planned or "command economies", or else had strong government intervention that basically ignored price. It's a matter of opinion, but many economists today would say that the countries that have ignored or distorted the world price have been left with the least efficient and least productive agricultural sectors. My research at FAO included developing the type of data set of monthly prices that is needed to analyse agricultural price transmission and other price questions.
What do you feel you have learnt from your year at FAO?
The main thing I've learnt at FAO is that there are many different perspectives and ideas regarding food and agricultural policies around the world. Economists from different countries working in an international enviroment often think more broadly than someone like me, with my somewhat narrow North American perspective, and for good reason. As a North American from a highly competitive, consumer-driven economy, I am used to fast-paced economics, with price and profit often being the bottom line and driving factor in everyday life. But economists from some other parts of the world may be used to seeing things happen more slowly, with social objectives and factors such as culture, religion and tradition playing a larger role than economics.
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