Stephanie A. Mercier is Senior Policy Adviser at the Farm Journal Foundation, USA. From 1997 to 2011, she served as a chief economist for the Democratic staff of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Previously, she served as team leader for the Trade Policy and Programs area of the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In her nine years at ERS, she worked on both domestic commodity programs and trade policy issues. On the Hill, she covered a wide variety of issues for the Committee, among them domestic farm programs, climate change, risk management policy, international agricultural trade, agricultural development, and food aid policy.
Steve A. Halbrook is a recently retired Professor of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Arkansas. Dr. Halbrook spent most of his career in government, private industry and the not-for-profit world, at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, United StatesDepartment of Agriculture, National Dairy Promotion and Research Board and Farm Foundation. In private law practice, he represented numerous dairy cooperatives in the Midwest. In all of these roles he worked with stakeholders, public officials and social scientists across the country to find innovative ways to address issues of importance to agriculture and rural communities.