Brief biographical sketch

David Blandford is a professor of agricultural and environmental economics in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University. He is also a professor in the School of International Affairs.

Born and educated in the United Kingdom, he received his Ph.D. from the Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies. From 1975-1990 he was a professor of agricultural trade and marketing at Cornell University. From 1982-83 he was an economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. From 1990-1998, he was the head of a division in the OECD's Directorate for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, whose role was to analyze the international impact of agricultural policies in OECD countries. From 1998-2004, he served as the head of the AE&RS Department at the Pennsylvania State University.

Blandford has twice served as the chair of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium - a group of economists drawn from academia, government and the private sector from the North America and around the world. He is the current president elect of the Agricultural Economics Society (2010-11) in the United Kingdom.