 |
| CLICK HERE TO VIEW CURRENT ISSUE |
 |
| Best of NAMA 2025 |
|
 |
|
PURDUE ISSUES NEW PAPER "WHAT 40 YEARS OF AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT TEACHES US ABOUT UNCERTAINTY"
Jan. 23, 2026
Source: Purdue University Center for Food and Agricultural Business
West Lafayette, IN -- You're not alone if economic uncertainty feels intense right now. That's not wrong. But it also isn't new for agribusiness.
Over the past four decades, the industry has navigated farm crises, globalization, financial shocks, trade conflicts and a global pandemic. Each challenge forced leaders to rethink how they manage risk, allocate capital and coordinate across an increasingly turbulent food system.
As the operating environment changed, the way agribusiness management was taught and practiced had to change with it. A new paper drawing on five decades of Purdue faculty experience examines how these disruptions shaped successive editions of the seminal Agribusiness Management textbook.
This work is especially meaningful to us. It brings together scholars such as Jay Akridge, Dave Downey, Freddie Barnard, Trey Malone and others who helped build agribusiness management as an academic field in lockstep with the industry. Their ideas shaped how generations of students and industry leaders learned to think about management under uncertainty.
That history matters as we mark the 40th anniversary of the Purdue University Center for Food and Agricultural Business, the first center of its kind. For forty years, our center has focused on connecting management thinking to real-world agribusiness decisions in an industry where uncertainty is the rule rather than the exception.
This paper is a reminder that agribusiness management evolves as the system evolves. Preparing leaders for what comes next requires that same capacity to adapt and is a perspective that has shaped our work for forty years.
|
|
|
|
|
