THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS SOCIETY
Newsletter
July 2026

Letter from the President
UK and EU Agricultural Policy Priorities

Agricultural policy consists of setting long-term goals or priorities to address the main perceived challenges facing the sector. It also involves the design of policy instruments and allocation of budgets to achieve those goals, while ensuring the institutional capacity to administer them. Both the UK (specifically, England) and the EU have recently redefined their agricultural priorities. The European Commission published its Vision for Agriculture and Food in February 2025, while the UK government published its Farming Roadmap 2050: Growing England’s Future last month. 

Not surprisingly, similar priorities are identified in both documents. The Farming Roadmap is built around the four priorities of profitability, productivity, sustainability and resilience. The Commission Vision highlights farm viability, competitiveness, sustainability and resilience. The Roadmap sets an explicit objective of at least maintaining England’s food production at current levels, while the Commission’s Vision refers to reducing strategic dependencies and derisking supply chains. 

But under the surface, there are important differences of emphasis. The Roadmap is explicit that most farm income will come from the market, while public funding focuses on outcomes that markets alone do not reward. The Commission Vision, on the other hand, insists that public support through the CAP remains essential to support farmers’ income. 

The Roadmap is also more explicit that farming must shift to lower-input, nature-friendly farming systems. Transition support can be available, but as these practices become more widespread, support will be withdrawn and the practices will be embedded in regulation. The Commission’s Vision paper also argues that food production, nature protection and decarbonisation are compatible but is much less clear how this will be achieved.

Both documents set out high-level principles and sidestep the inevitable trade-offs that characterise the phases of policy design and implementation. But they are important statements of the direction of travel.

Alan Matthews, AES President 2026-27 (Alan.Matthews@tcd.ie)

AES £100,000 Centenary Postgraduate Research Support
Applications Open

In celebration of our Centenary year of 2026, the AES Executive Committee has established the Centenary Postgraduate Research Support (CPRS) fund allocating a total of £100,000 over three years. This will provide tuition or stipend co-support, top-up scholarships, skills-based support, professional development workshops and publication support grants. CPRS applications are now open.

The closing date for the first round of funding is 31 October 2026, and the application form and background information are available on the AES website.

Supervisors are responsible for applying to the fund and must have at least three years recent continuous AES membership, plus either recent AES conference attendance or have recently published in the JAE or EuroChoices. Research topics must align to the aims and objectives of the AES, and students will be expected to contribute to AES conferences and/or submit work to the JAE or EuroChoices. Third party co-funding is welcomed and organisations and institutions wishing to co-support CPRS should contact me. 

Paul Wilson, AES Past President (paul.wilson@nottingham.ac.uk)

Commemorative Special Issue of the JAE

In another initiative to mark the Society’s Centenary, the final JAE issue of 2026 will be a commemorative Special Issue. The papers will reflect the wide scope of the Society’s intellectual interests. A number of these papers were presented at the Centenary Annual Conference in Oxford last March. 

Curating this Special Issue will be one of the final duties of the outgoing JAE Editor-in-Chief, Jonathan Brooks. Frederic Ang (Reading) will succeed Jon as Editor-in-Chief later in the year. Jon took up the post in 2023, and the AES is very grateful to him for his marvellous work in a demanding role.

David Stead, AES Honorary Secretary (david.stead@ucd.ie)

EuroChoices
News from the New Editor-in-Chief

2026 is a landmark year for EuroChoices. Most notably, the Founding Editor-in-Chief, Professor John Davis, has finally hung up his red pen after an incredible, and incredibly successful, 25 years of leadership. We all owe John a huge debt of gratitude. For myself, taking over as Editor-in-Chief with the journal in such rude health, this is a wonderful blessing, but it means I have a lot to live up to. Fortunately, I have an amazing team of Editors, and a great team at Wiley, to work alongside.

Thanks to the work everyone has done, we have not only carved out a unique place in the journal publishing landscape, but in recent years we have seen our initial bibliometrics, which started impressively, grow rapidly. The latest data, recently published, show a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of 2.9, marginally down on last year but still consistent with a long-term upwards trend. The 5-Year Impact Factor was up to 3.3, from 2.9, maintaining a strong upward trend. This placed EuroChoices at 12/45 in the Agricultural Economics and Policy category. We have also retained our Q2 standing, with the JIF Percentile now up to 74.4.

2026 will also be significant in that, by the time you read this, we shall have transitioned from the old email-based submission and communication system to Wiley’s Research Exchange platform. As I type this in late June, we are making the final preparations for the switch, which will happen on 30 June. Hopefully your experiences since the switch have been positive. Do let us know of any problems!

Finally, EuroChoices will be going online-only from next year. Our aim is to retain everything that is beloved of the journal, but to see what new opportunities this offers to our authors and our readers. More news as this progresses. Many thanks for the welcome and support I have received. I look forward to serving you all in the coming years.

Rob Ackrill, Editor-in-Chief, EuroChoices (robert.ackrill@ntu.ac.uk)

AES Annual Conference 2027

The Society’s next Annual Conference will be held in Budapest, Hungary, 22-24 March 2027. This will be the first AES Annual Conference to take place in Central Europe. The call for papers will be issued in September 2026.

Planning Continuing for AES One-Day Events in 2026

Planning is ongoing for a third in the series of successful one-day dialogues between the AES and the agri-food industry. This event, provisionally titled Challenges and opportunities for the demand and supply of meat and alternative meat products in Scotland, is intended to be held in the late autumn in Edinburgh.

At the time of writing, the date of the dialogue day, and the date of the regular Defra-AES one-day conference in London, are being finalised. 

Full details of both conferences, when confirmed, will be posted on the AES website https://aes.ac.uk/events and circulated to Society members by email.

AES Social Media

Recently, in an initiative by the Society’s Social Media Manager Neil Chalmers (Aberdeen), the AES joined Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ageconsoc.bsky.social.

Meanwhile the Society’s LinkedIn group is just over a year old and currently has 612 members: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13203079/.

Additionally since 2024 the AES has run a blog on its website: https://aes.ac.uk/blog.

The latest two blog posts discuss topics of much current interest: the use of AI in economic research, and the EU-Mercosur trade agreement. In the Society’s Centenary year, another recent blog summarises the work of the ‘Sub-Committee to enquire into the desirability of forming an AES’. Older blog posts discuss classic issues such as ‘What is agricultural economics?’ and ‘Writing a good research paper’. 

David Stead, AES Honorary Secretary (david.stead@ucd.ie)

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The Newsletter is posted on the AES website and circulated with printed copies of the JAE. Please send items for the next issue by 7 December 2026 to AES Honorary Secretary david.stead@ucd.ie