The associate director of a University of Missouri think tank, Seth Meyer, will become USDA chief economist at the end of January, succeeding Rob Johansson, who held the post since 2015, said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Monday. As chief economist, Meyer will be responsible for USDA’s agricultural forecasts and projections and will advise the agriculture secretary on the economic impact of legislation and regulations.
The change in chief economists will coincide with the arrival of the Biden administration. Meyer is an old hand at USDA, having worked as chairman of USDA’s World Agricultural Outlook Board, which monitors production and consumption of major agricultural commodities around the world.
“Rob has really been in the thick of things…busy as any economist in the job,” said Johansson’s predecessor, Joe Glauber of the IFPRI think tank. During his tenure, Johansson was part of a reorganization that combined USDA’s farm support, crop insurance and land stewardship agencies into a new new administrative wing and he oversaw the creation of a series of trade war and pandemic relief programs for farmers.