Tom Reardon – 2025 Alumni of the Year of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley

The Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE) at UC Berkeley has a glorious history. Among its illustrious alums is John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006), one of the twentieth century’s leading public intellectuals and economists. Another is Philip Habib, a distinguished diplomat who played a significant role in easing Cold War tensions. Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) won the Nobel Prize in Economics for developing macroeconometric models. Zvi Griliches (1930–1999), the father of technology adoption research and a pioneer of production economics, and Yair Mundlak (1927–2015), who introduced the use of fixed effects to estimate agricultural productivity, were also among the department’s most remarkable graduates. Among its faculty were Harry Wellman (1899–1997)—later Acting President of the University of California and namesake of buildings at both Berkeley and Davis—and distinguished scholars such as George Kuznets (1909–1986) and Nobel Laureate Guido Imbens.

The department established the Alumni of the Year Award to honor former students who have made transformative contributions to agricultural and resource economics. The first recipient was Dennis Aigner, who pioneered the estimation of frontier production functions and the study of links between environmental performance and profitability. Other honorees include Richard Just, one of the most influential agricultural economists of the late twentieth century, and Jill McCluskey, a leading scholar of consumer behavior and environmental preferences, now president-elect of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. The 2025 Alumni of the Year is Thomas Reardon, Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University.

Tom and his Remarkable Cohort

Tom, a native of Southern California, attended Berkeley’s ARE program from 1980 to 1984. I was privileged to teach Tom and his cohort during their first year—a truly memorable class. Three of its members—Tom Reardon, Jeff LaFrance, and Ed Taylor—became Fellows of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Others achieved prominence across academia and policy: Yacov Tsur, a global expert in water and resource economics; Harry de Gorter, a pioneer of biofuel economics; Claudia Parliament, who developed innovative high-school curricula in economics; Kostas Stamoulis, Senior Advisor at the FAO; Roy Allen, Distinguished Professor at St. Mary’s College; and Ramon Espinel, who served as Ecuador’s Minister of Agriculture. This was a brilliant, inquisitive, and hardworking group—one that constantly questioned the assumptions and techniques of economics itself.

Intellectual Curiosity and the Life of Learning Development by Living It

Tom stood out for his humor and unconventional spirit. I recall that for a semester, he lived in one of the closets in Giannini Hall, and we quietly shielded him from janitors and administrators. He was intellectually fearless—deeply interested in development economics but skeptical of narrow modeling approaches. His dissertation, supervised by Alain de Janvry, focused on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models and involved collaboration with Sherman Robinson, yet Tom’s heart was elsewhere. He was proud of his humanities background and persistent in asking fundamental questions: What is the relevance of theory to history? Does rigor always imply insight? Tom believed that economics too often prioritized formalism over real-world relevance—a conviction that would guide his career.

After earning his PhD, Tom was offered a postdoctoral position at Berkeley—an opportunity most would seize immediately. Instead, he chose to work at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), where he could live and work in developing countries. There, he gained first-hand exposure to rural economies and the realities of food systems. Declining an administrative position at IFPRI, Tom accepted a faculty post at Michigan State University (MSU)—to my astonishment. “How,” I asked, “can a son of Southern California move to the North Pole?” But the decision was inspired. MSU had one of the most dynamic development economics groups in the world—deeply engaged with field realities in Africa and Asia^[1]. This environment suited Tom perfectly. He spent years in the tropics, combining travel, observation, and analysis to develop an original, empirically grounded intellectual agenda.

A lifelong pursuit of challenging accepted truths through evidence and observation.

At MSU, Tom became known for questioning established paradigms in development economics. Like many innovators, his ideas initially met resistance before becoming accepted as the new conventional wisdom.

Among Tom’s most influential contributions was his pioneering analysis of how supermarkets spread across developing countries and reshaped their economies, supply chains, and consumption patterns. The prevailing belief was that supermarkets were a phenomenon of affluent economies and irrelevant to poorer nations. Tom’s research demonstrated otherwise. With painstaking empirical work, he and his collaborators showed how supermarkets were spreading rapidly in Latin America, China, India, and Africa—driven by both foreign investment and local entrepreneurship. They traced the evolution of value chains that supplied these modern outlets and analyzed their effects on farmers, processors, and consumers. Today, the supermarket revolution is a cornerstone of the literature on structural transformation in food systems.

Tom’s second major insight was what he termed the “quiet revolution”—the rise of dynamic intermediary sectors in developing-country food supply chains. Traditional analyses focused almost exclusively on farmers, but Tom revealed the growing role of processors, wholesalers, logistics providers, and other “hidden” actors who add most of the value and employment beyond the farm gate.
Together with scholars such as Johan Swinnen and Chris Barrett, Tom helped reorient development thinking toward agrifood value chains, emphasizing that economic transformation occurs as much in the links between farmers and consumers as on the farm itself.

A third influential idea concerned farmers’ allocation of time. Conventional models treated farmers as full-time agricultural producers, but Tom’s field research revealed that many rural households earn substantial income from non-farm activities. This has profound implications for technology adoption: labor-intensive innovations—such as manual pest control or terracing—often fail because farmers value their time and face opportunity costs. Tom’s work helped refocus development policy on the realities of diversified livelihoods and the need for technologies that respect farmers’ constraints.

Tom’s scholarship reflects a consistent theme: skepticism toward paternalistic assumptions that underestimate the capacities of people in developing countries. While he recognizes the importance of aid, he emphasizes that self-driven adaptation and entrepreneurship are the true engines of development. His work highlights the capacity of local actors to absorb, adapt, and innovate—transforming assistance into autonomy. This vision resonates with my own experience: economic analysis must extend beyond firms and consumers to encompass entire supply and value chains, where transformation actually occurs.

When I began studying biofuels, pest management, and irrigation supply chains, I found Tom’s work profoundly illuminating. Collaborating with him—often while he was based partly in Berkeley—has been a great pleasure and a challenge. He is endlessly curious, brimming with ideas, and intellectually fearless. Scheduling meetings with him, however, remains an adventure; his enthusiasm for discoveries often takes him in unpredictable directions. Yet those who adapt to this rhythm find in him a remarkable collaborator whose insights are always worth the wait.

Continuing Impact and Legacy

Tom continues to observe, question, and document how technological and institutional change intersect with real economies. He reminds us that development is not static but a process of discovery, diffusion, and adaptation. His work compels us to recognize the agency and creativity of individuals and communities often dismissed as “less developed.” For his intellectual courage, field engagement, and transformative impact on how we understand global food systems, Tom Reardon richly deserves the 2025 Alumni of the Year Award. We celebrate him not only for his achievements but also for his example: a scholar who reminds us that economics is most potent when it is grounded, informed by curiosity, and inspired by humanity.

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^[1] With all the criticism, the USAID supported activities of Michigan State in developing countries contributed to saved lives and the cutting of USAID funds will have tragic consequences