Insights from the Presidential Addresses to the Agricultural Economics Society

ABSTRACT The Society's published presidential addresses have embraced a wide range of subject matter, reflecting a ‘road well travelled’ in agricultural economics. The areas covered include the development and use of data and statistics, lessons from history, sectoral analysis, land economics, international trade and international development. There has been a major focus on the application of economic concepts to agricultural and agri‐environmental policy. The addresses also led to consideration of a number of important issues that go beyond the confines of technical analysis to a ‘road less travelled’. These issues include weaknesses in behavioural assumptions in economic theory, the challenge of objectivity in applied analysis, the limitations imposed by a static theoretical framework and the inadequacies of welfare economics in addressing distributional issues in policy choice. The addresses, spanning almost 100 years, demonstrate the role of agricultural economics in evidence‐based policymaking to address critical issues in the use of natural resources. The apparent rejection of the evidence‐based approach in some countries raises the question of whether humankind will be successful in finding a solution to the existential challenge posed by climate change.