THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS SOCIETY
Newsletter
April 2026

Letter from the President
The AES enters its centennial year!
The Society celebrated the centenary of its foundation with style and panache during its Annual Conference held 23-25 March 2026 at Wadham College, one of the Oxford colleges. This took place on 24 March 2026, exactly 100 years following the business meeting which established the Society, and just down the road from where that meeting took place. 

The day began with two talks which looked back over the history of the Society. David Stead, who has authored a wonderfully entertaining and scholarly history of the Society’s first hundred years, recalled some key moments and personalities in the Society’s history. David Blandford summarised themes from the paper he has authored in the Society’s Journal reviewing the topics chosen for Presidential Addresses. I then read my own Presidential Address on the topic ‘Agri-food policymaking in a more turbulent world’. The undoubted highlight of the day was the address of HRH The Princess Royal and the Society is extremely grateful for her attendance and thoughtful perspectives she generously shared.

The day continued with two plenary sessions with internationally distinguished panellists discussing global challenges facing agricultural economics, and issues in implementing empirical research for healthy and sustainable food systems, respectively. Two plenary papers by Professor Jill McCluskey reviewing developments in food markets, and Professor Tom Hertel, drawing on his experiences working with colleagues from the sustainability sciences, provided the framework for a very full programme of contributed papers and symposia throughout the three days.

The Annual Conference marked significant changes in the officer board of the Society. Wilfrid Legg stepped down as Secretary and Derek Shepherd as Treasurer, both after 20 years of service, while Steve Ramsden retired as Chairman of the Society for the past six years. Society members owe a huge debt of gratitude to these colleagues for shouldering these responsibilities, and for leaving the Society in extremely good shape as it starts on its second century.

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

New AES £100,000 Centenary 
Postgraduate Research Support
In celebration of our Centenary year, 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. 

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 paul.wilson@nottingham.ac.uk. The application process will be announced via AES mailing and hosted on the AES website www.aes.ac.uk in the coming months. 

Paul Wilson, AES Past President

AES Centenary Conference 
Wadham College, Oxford
This landmark AES Annual Conference attracted a record 295 registered delegates, including many long-standing Society members. In enriching parallel and plenary sessions (a few of which were held in the University’s Examination Schools), attendees considered a range of topics: from the economics of animal diseases and the design of rural policies to measuring consumer preferences and reducing household food waste. The event also included group photographs and the launch of A Centenary History of the Agricultural Economics Society (published by Palgrave Macmillan). Symposia marking 25 years of EuroChoices, and on the history of the domestic Farm Business Survey, which the Society’s founders helped to establish in 1936, maintained some long-run reflection in the proceedings while also looking ahead.

Special guest HRH The Princess Royal congratulated the AES on its centenary and – using a phrase heard while attending Alan Matthews’ highly acclaimed Presidential Address – underlined the challenges Society members face in being independent ‘honest brokers’, trying to shape a sustainable and resilient future for the agricultural industry in so many places around the world.

At the conference dinner, awards to John Davis (Lifetime Achievement); David Pannell (Lifetime Achievement in Research); and Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong and Luis Peña-Lévano (Outstanding Young Researchers) were bestowed. Presentations were also made to the three outgoing AES officers Stephen Ramsden, Derek Shepherd and Wilfrid Legg. Derek and Wilfrid were awarded Honorary Life Membership of the Society. The prize for the best poster at the conference was won by Jennifer Dodsworth (Oxford) for ‘Co-producing economic evidence: a participatory, mixed-methods exploration of transaction costs in England’s SFI pilot’. The best PhD presentation prize was awarded to Josef Baumert (Bonn) for ‘Fusing generative AI and economic modelling to estimate field-level crop production in data-scarce world regions’. On the first day of the conference, the JAE prize paper award winner, Jan-Philip Uhlemann (Bonn again), delivered his ‘Automating food production: evidence from the Dutch food industry’.

Especial thanks are due to Programme Secretary Hervé Dakpo (INRAE), Katy Thorne (AES Secretariat) and members of the AES Executive Committee for their efforts in managing the great logistical demands and organising an enormously successful and memorable Conference. With an exceptionally strong response to the call for papers this year, the AES would welcome submissions for its next Annual Conference in Budapest, Hungary, 22-24 March 2027, when the call for papers is issued in the autumn of 2026. 

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

All change!
New Editors-in-Chief and AES officers 
The AGM at the Centenary Conference formally approved a ‘changing of the guard’. Sarah Baker (AHDB) is the new Chair of the Executive Committee; David Stead (UCD) is now Honorary Secretary; and Paul Caskie (AFBI) has become Honorary Treasurer. Carmen Hubbard (Newcastle) is President Elect. Cathal Buckley (Teagasc), Stuart Henderson (Kent), Claire Jack (AFBI) and Luiza Toma (SRUC) were elected to the Executive.

Meanwhile the AES and the European Association of Agricultural Economists have announced the appointment of Rob Ackrill (Nottingham Trent) as Editor-in-Chief of EuroChoices. He will take up the role in July 2026, succeeding John Davis who has edited the periodical since its inception. Rob is particularly committed to strengthening the journal’s role in connecting academic insight with policy debates, and to further developing the distinctive writing styles that make EuroChoices engaging and influential across diverse audiences. The AES has also announced that Frederic Ang (Reading) will succeed Jonathan Brooks in autumn 2026 as JAE Editor-in-Chief. On behalf of the membership, grateful thanks to all those vacating Society roles for their magnificent work!
David Stead

Reflections from the retiring 
AES Honorary Secretary
I retired as Hon. Sec. at the Oxford Centenary Conference of the Society after 20 years and passed the responsibility (and bell) into David Stead’s very capable, and younger, hands. I immensely enjoyed the task working with so many dedicated, supportive and knowledgeable colleagues (and the excellent Katy Thorne), as well as having the opportunity to interact with AES members at conferences, in a real ‘family’ atmosphere. It was a privilege and honour to do the job, leaving me with many great memories. And it was often fun!

I took over from John Davis’ long stewardship, who expertly helped steer the Society into its professionalism that we see today. It is now much more diverse in so many ways: members from across the globe, wider range of disciplines, a better gender balance – on a solid and sure financial footing. The photographs in David’s history of delegates attending early AES conferences at Wadham College could not contrast more starkly with this year’s photo taken in exactly the same spot, not least the now much younger look.

I intend to continue attending AES Conferences, try to keep up to date with developments, and would urge colleagues to remember that in these challenging times dissemination of your work needs to show that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’!

Wilfrid Legg, Honorary Secretary 2006-26 (wilfrid_legg@hotmail.com)

Planning underway for 
AES one-day events in 2026
Planning is underway for a third in the series of successful dialogues between the AES and the agri-food industry. It is intended that this meeting will again take place during the summer, but this time at a venue in Scotland. The regular Defra-AES one-day conference in London is provisionally scheduled for 4 December 2026. 

Details of both events will be posted on the AES website and circulated to members by email.

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The Newsletter is circulated with the JAE and posted on the AES website. Please send items for the next issue by 1 July 2026 to david.stead@ucd.ie