My Research

My research is guided by a commitment to informing evidence-based agricultural policy. When I started my research training at Kansas State University, I had zero background in the farm safety net. I remember peers saying the space, especially crop insurance, was already covered: most work focused on yield distributions or index insurance, and some thought the field had little left to explore. I did not let that stop me. I believed farm-safety-net instruments would become central to agricultural policy, so I committed to learning the U.S. context in depth. That decision shaped my path.

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How my research grows

My research follows a point-plot structure. Each paper is a key contribution and a point on the plot, never an endpoint. Each one pushes the agenda forward while opening new questions, methods, and collaborations. The work does not grow in a straight line; it expands outward as a network of evolving ideas, point by point and paper by paper, redrawing the map of the farm safety net.

A connected agenda: from the FCIP rating framework to policy design

The clearest thread runs from my dissertation outward. Under my advisor Dr. Jesse Tack, I introduced an econometric method that integrates topographic and soil data into the crop-insurance rating procedures used by the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA). The work showed significant benefits of including soil data for farms with short yield histories (0–4 years), with the advantage diminishing as records extend toward 10 years. Published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, it won the 2022 AAEA Best Paper in Applied Risk Analysis and the WAEA Outstanding Published Research award.

That rating framework opened onto a series of connected papers: work on the actuarial effects of routine rate revisions, and the calibration of sub-county end-of-season yields from RMA’s summary of business merged with the Actuarial Data Master (ADM). Because farm-level yields are notoriously hard to obtain, those calibrated yields now feed agent-based models I use to explore policy design across several dimensions:

• Risk reduction delivered by crop insurance and supplemental products
• Basis risk in area- and agroclimatic-index insurance
• Fiscal cost to taxpayers and program budget exposure
• Risk transfer between the public and private sectors
• Actuarial soundness under rate revisions and program change

Current frontier: how producers choose

My current frontier is producer decision-making. With Jesse Tack and Dylan Turner, I am using quasi-revealed preferences to offer new insight into how producers choose among farm safety tools. This sits alongside the applied work I lead at the Agricultural Risk Policy Center during a period of rapid policy change: the elimination of prevented-planting buy-up coverage under USDA’s Expanding Access to Risk Protection (EARP) rule and the One Big Beautiful Bill, supplemental insurance design, premium interest deferrals, and FCIP portfolio growth and penetration. I am also building the U.S. Agricultural Risk and Peril Monitor dashboard and the analytical infrastructure behind it.

Communicating the farm safety net

A second, parallel strand of my work focuses on translating research and policy analysis for decision-makers, and this has become a central part of my role at the Agricultural Risk Policy Center (ARPC). The U.S. agricultural policy landscape is highly complex, with programs spread across multiple legislative vehicles and federal agencies. The current Farm Bill alone contains 12 titles, alongside a growing set of ad hoc responses to weather shocks, trade disruptions, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In collaboration with colleagues across USDA, I have contributed to official U.S. Government publications on the farm safety net, including Title I commodity programs and Title XI crop insurance, annual reviews of U.S. agricultural policy, U.S. farm-policy reports for the OECD and WTO, and USDA-ERS topic pages on FCIP participation and program costs. My current role at ARPC continues this work by producing ARPC-branded outputs that translate complex agricultural policy issues into accessible formats for public and private audiences.

My current ARPC reporting agenda examines the Federal Crop Insurance Program from end to end. One set of reports tracks the size, growth, and market penetration of the insurance portfolio, producer coverage choices, and take-up of supplemental products, with particular attention to participation among underserved groups such as beginning and organic producers. A complementary set examines the program’s public footprint and delivery system, including the government cost of the FCIP and the structure and characteristics of the private crop-insurance market. Two ongoing monitors, the NDSU Agricultural Risk and Peril Tracker monitors the evolving risk conditions as they change over time.

Computational tools

A large share of my work is software. I build and maintain open-source R packages that turn administrative data into reproducible, policy-relevant analysis, including arpcFCIP (FCIP simulation and benchmarking), arpcCost (production-cost calibration), arpcPriceBasis (price and basis), and arpcAgPerils (agricultural peril metrics). Browse my software and replication code.

Agricultural development in Ghana

Alongside the U.S. farm-policy work, I maintain an active program on technology adoption and productivity in Ghana, covering technical efficiency, the returns to farmer education, disability and production gaps, financial inclusion and credit, gendered wage and energy-use decisions, off-farm work and nutrition, and the links between resource extraction and farm performance.

A note to graduate students and early-career researchers

Start where you are, and do not wait to feel ready. When I began, the field looked crowded and I had no background in it; conviction and focus mattered more than a head start. Ask bold questions and follow them with discipline. Your research does not have to arrive fully formed, and it does not grow in a straight line: it expands one point at a time, and each point can help shape the future of the field.

I am always open to collaborations on FCIP, PLC/ARC, the broader U.S. farm safety net, and agricultural development. Email me.