Speaker Biographies

Cody Stone

For 20 years, Cody Stone has engaged clientele and faculty through his work with Extension in Texas and Montana.  In Texas, he served as an Extension Agent, 4-H Specialist, and Regional Program Director.  Cody and his wife Mary moved to Montana in 2005 to begin work at the Montana 4-H Center for Youth Development where he served as the Volunteer and Leadership Development Specialist before becoming the Director of the 4-H Center and State 4-H Program Leader.  Cody has served three years as the Associate Director of MSU Extension. After a nationwide search Cody was selected in August 2018 as the Extension Director.  He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Texas A&M University and a Doctorate in Adult and Higher Education from Montana State University. 

Kate Fuller

Kate joined the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University as an assistant professor and extension specialist in July 2014.  She studies the economics of agricultural pests and diseases, farm policy, and farm management decision-making.  She received her Ph.D. and also worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis.  Her dissertation and post-doctoral work examined the economics of various agricultural pests and diseases as well as the costs and benefits of programs and technologies to address them.  She grew up in rural Vermont. 

Anton Bekkerman

Anton Bekkerman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University.  His research interests include price analysis in grain markets, agricultural marketing, and the economics of production and management in the agricultural industry. Anton’s recent research focus on improving wheat price predictions for the northern United States, identifying the economic impacts of changes in the grain handling industry, and—as part of the MREDI agricultural project—understanding the market-level impacts of increase pulse production in Montana. On campus, Anton teaches the Economics of Agricultural Marketing and Managerial Economics and is the faculty advisor to the Collegiate Young Farmers and Ranchers student organization.

Ashley Hungerford

Ashley Hungerford joined the USDA-Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) in 2017, as an economist analyzing domestic agricultural policy.  Prior to joining OCE, Ashley worked as a research economist at the USDA-Economic Research Service in the Agricultural Policy and Models Branch. She detailed at the Office of Management and Budget, where she assessed USDA conservation programs, crop insurance, and Title I commodity programs. Ashley earned her PhD in Economics from North Carolina State University.

Eric Belasco

Eric Belasco joined the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University in August 2011.  Prior to this appointment, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Texas Tech University from 2007 - 2011.  He received both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from North Carolina State University in 2005 and 2007, respectively.  His main research interests are in the areas of agricultural marketing, risk management, and applied econometrics. The bulk of his research is focused on characterizing variability in cattle profits, production, and marketing. Examples of this research include evaluations into grid pricing risk, the use of forward contracts in mitigating profit risk, modeling multivariate risk in cattle production, and characterizing the link between weather and cattle production indicators.  His research also extends to health economics, where he conducts cost/benefit analysis for different medical treatments using simulation to evaluate issues associated with cancer, chronic kidney disease, and nutrition.

George Haynes

George is an Agricultural Policy Specialist with the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University and Athletic Faculty Representative. George is also currently serving as Interim Department Head for Agriculture Education Department.  Prior to his current position, George was a professor with the MSU Department of Health and Human Development.  George earned a doctorate in consumer economics and housing from Cornell University in 1993.  His contributions to the field of consumer finance and economics have been in the area of family business finance.  These lines of research have produced over 45 refereed journal articles, five book chapters, over 50 presentations and over 85 other reviewed monographs.  An important contribution of George’s family business finance work has been examining the intermingling of family and business financial resources.  This research has been supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Small Business Administration, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station. 

Brock Smith

Brock Smith is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics & Economics at Montana State University. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of California, Davis in 2013 and spent three years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (UK) before coming to MSU. His research is primarily focused on effects of natural resource booms on economic and social outcomes in both the US and in international settings. 

Dan Bigelow

Dan Bigelow is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University. Prior to coming to MSU in summer 2019, Dan spent four years in Washington, DC working for the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. He holds a BS and MS in Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts and a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from Oregon State University. Dan's research focuses on the economics of land and water resource management, primarily in application to the U.S. agricultural sector. 

Joel Schumacher

Joel Schumacher has been an Extension Economics Associate Specialist with the Department of Agricultural Economics at Montana State University since 2006. He holds a master’s degree in agricultural economics and a bachelor’s degree in business from Montana State University. His research and outreach programs focus on bioenergy production opportunities, agricultural policy and consumer economics. Prior to current appointment Joel worked as a pension analyst helping small business owners design and implement retirement plans.

M.L. Wilson

M.L. Wilson came to Montana in 1909 with a B.S. degree from Iowa State College.  He was a homesteader and then became the first Montana agricultural extension agent.  Subsequent to completion of a M.S. degree in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin, he was the first head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Montana State College.  He made major contributions to public policy and programs designed to meet the problems of drought, depression and low farm family income.  He is considered one of the architects of the original Federal agricultural commodity programs.

M.L. Wilson left Montana in 1933 to serve as chief economist in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.  He then served as Assistant and Under Secretary from 1934-1940 in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  He later served several foundations that focused on world agricultural issues.

M.L. Wilson was president of the American Farm Economics Association in 1925 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Montana State College in 1935.

M.L. Wilson Lecturer

Barry Goodwin
Interim Department Head and William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor, North Carolina State University

Barry Goodwin is William Neal Reynolds Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Graduate Alumni Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at North Carolina State University (NCSU).  He has also held positions at Kansas State University and Ohio State University.  He was elected as a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) in 2006 and served as President of AAEA from 2014 - 2015. He received the Holladay Medal from North Carolina State University in 2018. He has published over 150 journal articles and has received numerous awards for his research.  He is currently Head of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at NCSU.