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Blacks have been systematically under‐represented in the Agricultural Economics profession, representing only 7% of agricultural economists in academia and between 5% and 10% in the private and public sectors, respectively. Although different policies and funding strategies have been implemented to increase the representation of minorities in the profession, these numbers have not shown significant improvements over time. This paper provides an overview of the history, role, and struggles of 1890 Land‐Grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities in general, and in particular, their agricultural economics and business (AEB) Programs. Recommendations and thoughts on how to increase diversity in AEB programs are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate projections indicate that temperatures in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will rise by between 1.6 °C and 4 °C by the end of the century while changes in precipitation levels are expected to vary significantly across the region. This article estimates the impact of climate change on total factor productivity (TFP) and production. It combines data from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on 28 LAC countries for a 54‐year period (1961–2014) in order to inform policy makers of the cost of output losses in the absence of viable climate adaptation strategies. We use estimates of a random‐parameter stochastic production frontier (SPF) model specification to capture heterogeneity in technology and partial output elasticities across countries and unobserved environmental characteristics. Results show that change in output is mainly driven by an average annual TFP growth rate of.95%. Climate change induces significant reductions (9.03–12.7%) in productivity over the 2015–2050 period. In terms of output, these losses range from USD $14.7 to $31.4 billion dollars in the LAC region, depending on the scenario and the discount rate used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether climatic adjusted total factor productivity (CATFP) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is converging, converging to different steady states or exhibit absolute convergence, that is the process does not require (government) interventions to reach its equilibrium path. We use data from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and from the Food and Agriculture Organization for 28 LAC countries over a 54‐year period (1961–2014) to estimate random parameters stochastic production frontier models to calculate CATFP and then use cross‐sectional regressions and an error correction model to analyse CATFP convergence across countries in the region. The results show that technological progress is the main driver of CATFP growth in the region and there is no absolute convergence, that is CATFP gaps across countries will not decrease over time and least performing countries will not grow faster than better performing ones without targeted policies. However, CATFP across LAC exhibits conditional convergence towards different steady states. Technological progress plays a critical role in raising the steady state level of CATFP with an overall average of 2.22 per cent per annum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]