One of the nation's leading food and agricultural economists will speak at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday (April 18) in the Red Raider Ballroom of Texas Tech's Student Union Building. Hosted by Tech's Free Market Institute and the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources' Agricultural Awareness Week, admission to the presentation by Jayson Lusk, which will focus on the future of food, is free and open to the public.

Lusk, who serves as Regents Professor and Willard Sparks Endowed Chair in Oklahoma State University's Department of Agricultural Economics, is a prolific general audience author. His most recent effort is last year's Unnaturally Delicious: How science and technology are serving up super foods to save the world. Three years earlier he wrote, The Food Police: A well-fed manifesto about the politics of your plate.

Lusk, who also serves as the Samuel Roberts Noble Distinguished Fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, earlier co-authored books on experimental auctions, agricultural marketing and price analysis, and the economics of farm animal welfare.

He has published more than 175 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals on a wide assortment of topics, ranging from the economics of animal welfare to consumer preferences for genetically modified food to the impacts of new technologies and policies on livestock and meat markets to analyzing the merits of new survey and experimental approaches eliciting consumer preferences.

In addition, Lusk has worked on the editorial councils of eight academic journals, including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Food Policy. Today, he serves as the president of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. In 2015, he was named a fellow in that organization.

Lusk received his bachelor's degree in food technology from Texas Tech and his doctorate in agricultural economics from Kansas State University. Prior to joining the Oklahoma State faculty in 2005, he worked as an associate professor at Purdue University, and an assistant professor at Mississippi State University. In 2011, he lived in Paris for a time, serving as a visiting researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research.

Written by Norman Martin

CONTACT: Steven Fraze, Interim Dean, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Texas Tech University at (806) 742-2808 or steven.fraze@ttu.edu

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