Tom is Full Professor in the Tenure System. He joined AFRE/MSU in 1992. His MS is from Columbia University in 1979 and Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in 1984. Between receiving his Ph.D. in 1984 and starting at MSU in 1992, Tom was Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC and Rockefeller Post-Doctoral Fellow in Burkina Faso attached to the University of Ouagadougou and ICRISAT. Tom’s research focus is on the links between international development and agribusiness/food industry. He researchers the transformation of agrifood systems (supermarkets, processing firms, wholesale and logistics, and agricultural support services) and their effects on farmer incomes, technology, and rural employment, and agrifood business strategies implementation of innovations via design of supply chains. He has researched value chains in Africa, Asia, and Latin America covering horticulture, fish, dairy, poultry, and grains. He has researched rural nonfarm employment and its links to food systems and agricultural technology adoption. om was selected as Fellow of the AAEA in 2014 (approximately 250 Fellows have been selected from 30,000 AAEA members since 1957). Tom has one of the highest Google Scholar citations in the world among agricultural economists (22,284 and H index of 70 as of March 12, 2017), ISI Web of Science (4135 citations), and REPEC (top 2.3% of 49,500 registered economists worldwide) and is listed in 2003 Who’s Who in Economics.
