David Ortega is Professor and Noel W. Stuckman Chair in Food Economics & Policy in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University.

Part of the outreach David does is the Stuckman Lecture Series at Michigan State University, which brings leading voices in food and applied economics to campus, fostering critical discussions on the economic forces shaping our food systems and global markets. 

As the inaugural speaker, Scott Horsley sets the stage for an ongoing dialogue on the intersection of food, economics, and policy. Scott is NPR's Chief Economics Correspondent. He reports on ups and downs in the national economy as well as fault lines between booming and busting communities.

Conversation Highlights:

(1:02) - David, describe the work you do at MSU. What is food economics?

(1:48) - Who is Noel Stuckman and describe the mission of the series. Why are these discussions important?

(2:47) - Scott, what do you see as the key issues in food economics, and what are you focused on reporting?

(4:28) - What messages do you hope to leave with the audience?

(5:37) – When it comes to food economics, is there a fact you would like to reinforce or a myth you would like to dispel?

(8:32) - What’s the mood at NPR after cuts? What’s ahead?

(10:13) – What will you be reporting on and researching in the coming months?

Listen to “MSU Today with Russ White” on the radio and through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.

Conversation Transcript:

Russ White (00:00):

Well, David Ortega is professor and Noel W Stuckman chair in Food Economics and Policy in the Department of Agricultural Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. David, great to have you back on MSU today.

David Ortega (00:15):

Thanks, Russ. Happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:17):

In a moment, we're going to talk to NPR Scott Horsley because part of the outreach David does in the Stockman lecture series that is inaugurating today with us, Scott. It's bringing together leading voices in food and applied economics to campus, fostering critical discussions on the economic forces shaping our food systems and global markets. As the inaugural speaker, Scott Horsley sets the stage for an ongoing dialogue on the intersection of food economics and policy. Scott is NPR'S Chief Economics correspondent. He reports on the ups and downs in the national economy. Scott, great to have you at MSU.

Scott Horsley (00:53):

It's great to be here in Michigan.

Speaker 1 (00:56):

David, first a little bit about the work you do. What do you mean by food economics and what does the department do?

Speaker 2 (01:02):

Yeah, so I'm a food economist and that's really a subdiscipline of economics where we look at how food goes all the way from farm to table and all of the people that are involved in producing the food, distributing that food. But we also look at what affects the food on its journey shocks, and we look at prices and economics as sort of an outcome. And there's been a lot of factors that have really converged over these past few years that have led to significant increases in the price of food. Also teach both at the undergraduate and graduate level, teach food marketing management for undergrads, but also food policy at the graduate level to our masters and PhD students.

Speaker 1 (01:42):

So David, who is Noel Stuckman and describe the mission of this lecture series. Why are these discussions important?

Speaker 2 (01:49):

Yeah, so Noel Stuckman is a graduate of Michigan State University who went on to have a very distinguished 30 year career with Michigan Farm Bureau working with leaders across the state. And really it was his vision and generosity that made both the chair but also the lecture series possible. And the lecture series came about from a need to have a broader conversation about some of the challenges that are facing both the agricultural and food sector issues like the high price of food and the tremendous policy uncertainty at the moment that are affecting not only decisions on the farm and in agribusiness boardrooms, but also around kitchen tables across the country. And so I think it's an important time to have this discussion and I'm very excited to have Scott to kick us off with the lecture series.

Speaker 1 (02:39):

And Scott Horsley, why are you interested in these issues and what do you see as the key issues right now in food economics that you're reporting on?

Speaker 3 (02:47):

Well, it's a great honor to be kicking off this lecture series. I'm flattered that David thought of me. He's been a great resource for us. We've relied on his expertise many times on the radio to help explain what's going on with our food supply. And I hope to maybe repay the favor a little bit. We've seen at the macro level, we've seen grocery prices more or less level off. I mean, they haven't gone down by and large, but they're not going up the way they were a number of years ago where we had for a little while we had double digit grocery price inflation. That's the thing of the past now. And now prices are going up at sort of a more normal level, but for people who had a couple of decades of very stable food prices, the pandemic shock and then the shocks around the war in Ukraine really rattled people and they continue to rattle people.

(03:41):

I think there was just an AP poll this summer that showed that a large segment of the population still feels a lot of stress around the price of groceries. President Trump has said many times that he thinks frustration around grocery prices was a big reason he got reelected and is back in the White House today. Now whether his policies are going to help or not, when you put tariffs on imported food and when you deport the people and pick and process our crops, that's another question. But clearly frustration about high food prices has had an impact on our political environment. It's had an effect on the way people feel about the economy. And all of those are things that are kind of interesting to explore and talk about.

Speaker 1 (04:23):

And Scott, what are some of the key messages you hope to leave the audience with at the Stuckman lecture?

Speaker 3 (04:28):

Well, I'm going to talk about this I hope in not super technical economic terms, but I'm just going to share some of the stories that I've covered over the last few years, whether it's the frustration around grocery prices, but also some context for that, reminding people that we still have in this country. We are blessed with a pretty robust and generally affordable food supply relative to a lot of other countries relative to the way it was in this country in earlier decades. Even though it seems like we've kind of been hammered with food prices, we're still pretty lucky here we're more likely to suffer from too many calories than not enough as the people. But I'm going to talk a little bit about that. I'm going to talk about the farm worker issue, about some of the interesting kinks that have come up in food supply chains over the years. A little bit about the international piece, whether it's tariffs or export markets and that sort of thing. And then a little bit around the politics. Those are kind of the areas I hope to hit on this evening.

Speaker 1 (05:28):

And Scott and David both just wondering if when it comes to food economics, is there maybe a fact you would want to reinforce or maybe a myth to dispel?

Speaker 3 (05:38):

Well, I do think it's easy to lose sight. Again, we had a long period in this country really through the eighties, nineties aughts and teens where food prices were pretty stable. And so the inflationary period we had from 2020 to 20, 23, 24, it certainly was surprising for a lot of people. There would've been periods in that time when a particular good might've gotten more expensive. Maybe there was a period where hamburger got more expensive, but you could switch over to chicken or pork or something. But to see the whole grocery price bill go up, that was surprising for a lot of people. So I think it is helpful just to remind folks that we're still pretty lucky in this country. We still have a pretty abundant food supply, even in the depths of the pandemic grocery stores stayed pretty well stocked. There are a few exceptions here and there, but thank goodness I didn't have to rely on my neighbors victory garden to actually put food on the table every night. I would not be here to talk to you today, I would've starved to death. So we are pretty lucky with a fairly say, fairly resilient supply chain so that when there are shortages, it's big news because we're so unused to having shortages, lots of other parts of the world. That's not the case.

Speaker 2 (06:52):

I think I would add that when we look at the role of policymakers, someone like the president of the United States, they don't really have a lot of control over food prices, especially in the short term. It's largely set by market forces. Now, their policies can certainly affect those prices, but it doesn't come down to just one single individual that can sort of make the price of eggs come down or the price of bacon decrease. It's really market forces, good old supply and demand, but it's the policies that can really affect the price of food.

Speaker 1 (07:23):

And it's not like it's a character flaw or anything, but most of us, as you have said, food does not come from the grocery store. We have no idea what the supply chain is doing.

Speaker 2 (07:32):

And that's another thing, right? So there is a whole ecosystem. There are farmers, input suppliers, distributors that are responsible for getting that food from farm to table. A lot of us, our first point of contact is at the grocery store, but there's so much that happens prior to that that I think it's important to keep in mind. And the people that are responsible for growing our food and getting it there are incredibly important.

Speaker 3 (07:54):

I'm someone who primarily interacts with food at the grocery store or in my refrigerator, but as a reporter, I do get to go out and visit the people all along the chain, whether it's the food factory or the farmer who's pulling it out of the ground or the transportation companies that move food from one place to another. So I've gotten to look at a lot of the pieces of that supply chain, and it's always fascinating. And I do like to try to tell those stories so that when people go to the grocery store, they have a little bit more understanding of what's involved.

Speaker 1 (08:23):

And Scott, may I ask sort of the mood at NPR these days, the funding cuts from Corporation for Public Broadcasting, just what's the mood and what's ahead?

Speaker 3 (08:34):

Well, I think at NPR, we're feeling reasonably good about the system as a whole, but we're very concerned about some of our member stations, and in particular some of the rural member stations that are the most heavily dependent on the federal funding. The system as a whole, the federal funding was a significant but not life or death

(08:55):

Chunk of our revenue. But for some stations it could be a third of their revenue. And if that goes away, some of those stations are going to be in trouble. And that's a real shame because we know that there's a lot of information deserts out there. And those rural stations in many cases are a real lifeline for communities, whether it's emergency information or local information about their high school sports teams or having a picture of the wider world beyond their own county. And so I think the resources that the service that public broadcasting provides is really valuable. We hate to see it go away for any community, but I think nationally we don't feel like it's going to be an enormous problem. We've been really gratified by the way, our listeners who are of course always the biggest source of our RU funding listeners have really stepped up and in many cases fully replaced the money that's been lost. But in some of those rural places where there just are fewer people, fewer local people to help pay the bills, and they were more reliant on the federal funding, it's a real challenge.

Speaker 1 (10:00):

Well, Scott Horsley and David Ortega I appreciate the conversation. Last question, when it comes to food economics, what should the average American kind of keep in mind, what you would be looking at and reporting on, and in David's case, researching in the next several months?

Speaker 3 (10:14):

Well, it'll be interesting to see where do prices go from here when we are conducting, David talked about policy can have a difference at the margin, and we're employing some very, I will say, experimental policies right now. We have the highest tariffs that we've had in this country since the Great Depression. We're conducting a major shakeup in immigration enforcement. And it'll be interesting to see how those two policies play out and what that does to prices of the grocery store.

Speaker 2 (10:45):

And that's precisely what I'm going to be looking at from a research perspective going forward, is the impacts of these tariffs on food prices, but also the impacts of some of these other policies, sort of the immigration rates, what that's doing to farms, and also farmers' ability to have labor in their operations to be able to produce food for us. So a lot happening on the policy front that I think it's worthy of looking from a very academic perspective as well.

Speaker 1 (11:11):

Well, David Ortega is the Stuckman professor in food economics at Michigan State University. Scott Horsley is a National Public Radio Correspondent. Great having you both on the program today. And again, Scott, welcome to MSU.

Speaker 2 (11:24):

Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks Russ. Appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (11:27):

I'm Russ White. This is MSU today,

Speaker 2 (11:30):

Find rate, and subscribe to MSU today with Russ White on Spotify, apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows. And please feel free to share this episode if you're so inclined.

Speaker 1 (11:42):

Thank you for listening to MSU today.