March 30, 2021
Alejandro Plastina, associate professor, was interviewed about his recent paper in The Academic Times.
In a March 30 story, "Unusual weather is behind some agricultural gains, but humans are accidentally taking credit," Plastina said, "A portion of the [total factor productivity] change measured by USDA is due to weather shocks that are not influenced and cannot be controlled by economic or agricultural policies. We need to remove that portion of TFP change due to weather shocks before using the data for economic analysis."
The study, "How weather affects the decomposition of total factor productivity in U.S. agriculture," published in the journal Agricultural Economics, was coauthored by Sergio Lence, professor, and Ariel Ortiz-Bobea.