Tim Beatty, who joined UC Davis in 2014, is the new chair of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, or ARE, which routinely ranks among the best agriculture and applied economics programs in the world. 

ARE trains both graduate and undergraduate students and its managerial economics major is the fifth largest at UC Davis. Faculty researchers address issues in agriculture, the environment, natural resources and international development.  

A new major 

Beatty said a key priority is supporting a new undergraduate business major launching in 2025 jointly with the Department of Economics in the College of Letters and Science and the Graduate School of Management. Managing a generational shift in faculty and creating a supportive environment that maintains department excellence are also at the top of the list. 

“We’re really excited to do something positive for California students who are looking for that kind of program,” Beatty said.

Maintaining the excellence of the managerial economics major while teaching as an integral part of the business major might present challenges, but Beatty said the department will rise to the task. 

“Our goal as a department is to always be the best in our field and to attract the very best Ph.D. students and to train them to be the next generation of faculty,” Beatty said. “We really set the agenda for the research frontier in agricultural economics.”

He calls the system of Ph.D. students serving as Teaching Assistants, or TAs, for undergraduates an important synergy. 

“When our graduate students go out on the job market and are looking for academic positions, they have experience as TAs and they’re really equipped to jump right into the classroom,” Beatty said. “Our undergraduates benefit from being exposed to the best and the brightest Ph.D.’s as their TAs so there is a virtuous circle.” 

Faculty transitions 

The department is also undergoing a generational shift in faculty and, Beatty said, managing that “handing off of the torch from one generation to the next” is a key challenge.

“We’ve had some outstanding scholars, true giants in their field, either recently retire or on the verge of retirement and we’ve hired really well over the last few years,” Beatty said. “We have this exciting new group of younger scholars who I’m confident are going to revolutionize the field as they move through their careers.”

Nutrition and farmworker research

Beatty’s research studies how government policy affects some of the most vulnerable members of society. His work falls in two main areas: the effects of the federal nutrition assistance programs, such as CalFresh and WIC, and the occupational health and safety of California’s agricultural workers. 

He is president-elect of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, or AAEA, and is a former editor of its flagship journal, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. He also helped create, launch and currently serves as Founding Editor of the AAEA’s new open-access Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association in partnership with the academic publishing house Wiley.

His term began July 1.