On November 28, 2011, Mary E. Bohman took over as Administrator of the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), an agency that carries out economic research that helps public and private decision-makers stay informed of economic and policy issues involving food, farm production, natural resources, rural development and foreign demand and competition. She had been serving as Acting Administrator since July 2011.

 

Bohman earned her B.S. in Foreign Service from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1980, and her Ph.D. from the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of California at Davis in 1991, with a dissertation entitled, “The impact of the International Coffee Agreement on policy in exporting countries.” She had already obtained academic employment, working as Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver from 1990 to 1997. Her specialty was international trade and development.

 

Bohman returned to the U.S. to join ERS in 1997 and has served as Deputy Director for Research in ERS’s Market and Trade Economics Division (MTED) and as Chief of MTED’s Europe, Africa, and Middle East Branch. She has also been detailed to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and to USDA’s Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services. She served as Director of ERS’s Resource and Rural Economics Division from circa 2000 to July 2011.

 

Bohman is a member of the Agriculture & Applied Economics Association, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Wye Group on Statistics on Rural Development and Agricultural Household Income, and the International Association of Agricultural Economists.

-Matt Bewig