Fabiosa and Hayes to Lead Iowa State’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute

Contacts:
Bruce Babcock; babcock@iastate.edu
Jacinto Fabiosa; jfabiosa@iastate.edu
Dermot Hayes; dhayes@iastate.edu
Sandy Clarke; sclarke@iastate.edu

July 2, 2007

Jacinto F. Fabiosa and Dermot J. Hayes became the new co-directors of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at Iowa State University on July 1, 2007. They succeed John C. Beghin, director since 1999, who will spend the next year at the University of Sydney, Australia, before returning to the Iowa State Department of Economics.

Jacinto Fabiosa has served as FAPRI’s livestock and poultry analyst since 1997. In addition, he became technical director of FAPRI in 2002. Fabiosa came to Iowa State as a Fulbright Academic Enrichment Scholar from the Philippines and finished his Ph.D. in economics at Iowa State with the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) in 1993. Previously he worked at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

Dermot Hayes joined the economics department at Iowa State in 1986. He was head of the Trade and Agricultural Policy Division at CARD from 1990 through 1998, and he will return as head of the division beginning July 1. He obtained his degree in agriculture science from the University College in Dublin in 1981 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986 with a major in international trade. Hayes is the Pioneer Hi-Bred International Chair in Agribusiness and a professor in both the economics and finance departments at Iowa State University.

FAPRI was established in 1984 with a special appropriation of the U.S. Congress. It was created as a joint effort of Iowa State University and the University of Missouri at Columbia to build an econometric modeling system capable of providing quantitative analysis of agricultural commodity markets to Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other public policy groups. FAPRI’s modeling system is considered the most comprehensive for agricultural policy and trade analysis outside the USDA. FAPRI analysts are using the most recent modeling component to evaluate the impacts of diverting corn and other commodities to producing biofuels.