Oral Capps, Jr., PhD

Dr. Williams retired as Professor of Agricultural Economics and Co-Director of the Agribusiness, Food, and Consumer Economics Research Center (AFCERC) in 2021.  He previously served as the AFCERC chief operations officer responsible for managing the research program of the Center and led AFCERC research and outreach projects relating to commodity and agribusiness markets and policy and international trade and policy.  He was also Senior Scientist, Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture. His areas of teaching and research emphases include commodity promotion programs, international agricultural trade and development, agricultural policy, and marketing and price analysis.  Dr. Williams was raised in Lubbock, Texas and is a graduate of Monterey High School.  He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. degree in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University and a B.S. in Economics from Brigham Young University.  Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M University, he gained experience as a professor and Assistant Coordinator of the Meat Export Research Center at Iowa State University, Senior Economist at Chase Econometrics, agricultural economist for the USDA, and Special Assistant to the U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Agriculture for International Affairs and Commodity Programs at USDA.  Dr. Williams speaks fluent Spanish and lived and worked in Latin America throughout his career, focusing particularly on NAFTA (now the USMCA) and other agricultural trade, policy, and development issues. He is well known for his research on the economic effectiveness of commodity advertising and promotion programs, including those for soybeans, dairy, cotton, lamb, Florida orange juice, Texas citrus, Texas and U.S. pecans, USDA agricultural export programs, Norwegian seafood, and others.  He is also well known for his research on U.S. and world oilseed and oilseed product markets and the U.S. livestock industry including issues related to sheep and lamb markets and the effects of concentration in the beef packing industry.  He served as Chair of a National Academy of Science Committee on the Status and Economic Performance of the U.S. Sheep and Lamb Industry (see the Committee report: Changes in the Sheep Industry in the United States: Making the Transition from Tradition). He also served as a member of a National Academy of Science Committee on the Future of Animal Science Research (see Committee report: Critical Role of Animal Science Research in Food Security and Sustainability). He recently served as a member of the Review Oversight Committee for the Genome Canada funded Project: “Application of Genomics to Improve Disease Resilience and Sustainability in Pork Production”.

Rodolfo M. Nayga, Jr. is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. Dr. Nayga’s research interests include the economics of food consumption, policy, and health. He has focused his work on critical issues such as poverty, nutrition, obesity, and novel food technologies. He has examined issues related to how people comprehend and use food and nutritional labels and how these would then influence a number of important health related outcomes such as diet quality and obesity. He has also analyzed the effects of important federal food programs such as the National School Lunch Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Program on food consumption and obesity. His work in this area provided crucial information on the causal effects of important federal food programs/policies on health outcomes of various segments of the population including children and historically disadvantaged groups. Another strand of his research is on the application of stated and revealed preference elicitation methods to study how people would value novel food products, food programs, and policies. This research is crucial in determining whether a proposed food program or policy would be valued by the public or target population.

Prior to rejoining Texas A&M University in 2021, Dr. Nayga was Distinguished Professor and Tyson Endowed Chair in Food Policy Economics at the University of Arkansas. He also was a faculty member at Rutgers University and at Massey University, New Zealand. He has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, adjunct professor at Korea University and Norwegian Institute for Bioeconomy Research, NBER research economist, and senior research fellow of the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Tokyo. He also was executive board member of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast. 

Dan Hanselka specializes in economic and fiscal impact analysis, with a particular expertise in input-output modeling using IMPLAN software.

Dan has a B.S. in Animal Science, B.S. in Agricultural Economics, and a M.S. in Agricultural Economics from Texas A&M University.  

Victoria Salin is a Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University and since 2013, she has been Chair of the Intercollegiate Faculty of Agribusiness (http://tx.ag/agribusiness). She is also a Co-Director for the Agribusiness, Food, and Consumer Economics Research Center. 

Dr. Salin’s research relates to food safety, traceability, and efficiency of enterprises involved in food distribution.  Salin provides economic and financial research for the Scientific Advisory Council of the World Food Logistics Organization (wflo.org), an affiliate of the Global Cold Chain Alliance.  Salin serves on the Board of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (an affiliate of the CGIAR international agricultural research system) and in this capacity works with entrepreneurial ventures and other means to commercialize agricultural technologies to enhance food security in Africa.  Salin grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, a master’s degree from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. from Purdue University in agribusiness finance and international trade.

Currently, Dr. Dharmasena is Instructional Associate Professor for the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. He performs duties surrounding research, teaching, student advising and outreach responsibilities. Also, he is an Associate of the Agribusiness, Food and Consumer Economics Research Center (AFCERC) at Texas A&M University.

Dr. Dharmasena’s current research interests are in the areas of Consumer Economics, Behavioral Economics, Health and Nutrition Economics, Economics of Food Security, Food Environments and Obesity, Spatial Price Modeling, Probability Forecast Evaluation, and Market Integration and Price Discovery. He has extensive training in applied econometrics, both structural and time-series. He has expertise in organizing and analyzing extremely large consumer transaction data, such as Nielsen Homescan panel. Also, he is very comfortable with handling macroeconomic data and other national, state and county level data in modeling and forecasting work.

He has papers and/or abstracts published in Health Economics, Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Journal of Food Distribution Research, Resources, Energy and Development, and Sri Lankan Journal of Agricultural Economics. He is member of several professional associations including, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), Western Agricultural Economics Association (WAEA), Southern Agricultural Economics Association (SAEA) and International Health Economics Association (iHEA). Dr. Dharmasena has contributed to these professional associations in various capacities such as paper reviewer, selected presentation reviewer, judge, presentation moderator and organizer of symposia.

Dr. Ariun Ishdorj is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Intercollegiate Faculty of Agribusiness. Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M she conducted post-doctoral research at the Center of Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University. Ishdorj received her PhD in Economics from Iowa State University, M.S. in Mathematics from University of Idaho and B.S. in Mathematics from National University of Mongolia. Ishdorj’s primary research areas include the economics of food, nutrition, and health, with emphasis on cost and effectiveness of food and nutrition assistance policies and interventions, analysis of consumer demand, issues related to food insecurity and disability, and impacts of food environments on diet quality and health of low-income population. She has extensive experience in statistical modeling using primary and secondary large data on food and nutrition.

H.L. Goodwin holds the position Professor Emeritus in University of Arkansas’ Dale Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food and Life Sciences. He was Professor and Poultry Economist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, AR.  He joined the University of Arkansas Center of Excellence for Poultry Science as a faculty member in Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness in December 1997.  Prior to that date he was the Agricultural and Food Systems Policy Advisor to Slovakia (January 1996-December 1999) and a Fulbright Scholar in Czechoslovakia (1991-92).  Goodwin was on faculty of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University from 1982 through 1995 and served as the Associate Director of the Texas Agriculture Market Research Center from 1989 through 1995.  His current research and extension responsibilities are in economic and business issues related to the poultry industry, specifically:  poultry litter management and animal waste systems, grower profitability and grower relations, international trade, food safety linkages and comparative analysis of the industry with other food and non-food industry segments.  He has extensive experience survey design and implementation and in international work, specifically: Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Morocco, Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria. Dr. Goodwin’s teaching duties are in agribusiness and market structures, marketing management, professional growth, and entrepreneurship and sales.  He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Oklahoma State University in 1982.

Loren N. Burns is the Program Manager for the Agribusiness, Food, and Consumer Economics Center (AFCERC) in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. She is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the Center, as well as maintaining account records that include directing authorization and allocation of funds. Burns interacts with external and prospective clients to successfully define parameters, transaction terms, and limitations surrounding research projects. She edits and composes many different types of complex documents in addition to compiling and presenting periodic financial reports to meet the needs of the Department and University System.

Prior to joining the Department of Agricultural Economics, Burns was a Proposal Administrator at both the Texas A&M Research Foundation and the Texas A&M University System Sponsored Research Services where she worked with TAMUS researchers to provide a smooth transition into proposal and project management. Burns received her Bachelors of Science of Agribusiness with a Minor in Agricultural Economics from Texas A&M University in 2009.

Dr. Rafael Bakhtavoryan is an Associate Professor of Agribusiness at Texas A&M University- Commerce. His research interests are in applied demand analysis, applied econometrics, and forecasting. Dr. Bakhtavoryan received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Texas A&M University in 2011.

Retired U.S. Government Economist and Associate Professor.  Dr. Babula received a BA degree in economics from Florida State University (1976), an MS degree in agricultural economics from Iowa State University (1978), and a Ph.D. degree in agricultural economics from Texas A&M University (1986).  He retired from the U.S. Government in 2013 with about 25 years of service that included 12 years with the U.S. International Trade Commission and nearly 4 years with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.  Additionally, Dr. Babula has worked extensively overseas in Associate Professor assignments that included the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) and more recently, two, two-year contracts with the Department of Economics and Finance at Keimyung University where he taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels (South Korea, 2013-2015 and 2017-2019).  Throughout his career, Dr. Babula has applied econometric and non-econometric modeling methods to a wide array of issues of international trade (particularly issues concerning trade remedy policies), futures market contract regulation, analysis of various trade and macro-finance policies, and analysis of crop price impacts of farm-sector and agribusiness events.  He has published results from such inquiries widely in both refereed journals and in non-academic venues, so as to reach a wide array of audiences (academic, non-academic, legal, agribusiness etc.). While at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, he participated on teams that formulated, authored, and promulgatetd  complex sets of financial implementation rules on U.S. futures markets mandated by the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act. 

Macie is a current student assistant for FABA and the Agribusiness, Food, and Consumer Economics Research Center (AFCERC). She is a student at Texas A&M University and will be graduating in May of 2024 with a double major in Animal Science and Agricultural Economics.