Duncan Chembezi

Alabama A&M University
Normal, Alabama

Duncan Chembezi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agribusiness at Alabama A&M University. He is also the Director of the Small Farms Research Center within the School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. He works very closely with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System (ACES), providing outreach training, risk management education and technical assistance to underserved communities and agricultural producers who operate or manage small farms, often with limited resources. Prior to joining Alabama A&M University, Chembezi worked with the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He also was a founding-member of the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC) at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. At both FAPRI and APAC, Chembezi was involved in analyzing the impacts of alternative policy changes on U.S. agriculture.

Duncan understands agricultural production, market forces, and policies affecting agriculture and agricultural entrepreneurs and land owners in the south. He has extensive knowledge and understanding of the 1890 land-grant system, as he has of the 1862 land grant system. From 2001 to 2005, Duncan served as the co-director of the Southern AgBiotech Consortium for Underserved Communities (SACUC), a consortium of eleven 1890 land-grant universities in ten southern states dedicated to providing agricultural biotechnology awareness and education to producers and consumers in underserved communities through carefully tailored and targeted research, education, technology and commodity outreach efforts. Duncan serves as the USDA/CSREES Small Farm program State Coordinator for Alabama; and he sits on the Advisory Board of The Council on Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics (C-FARE), a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening the national presence of the agricultural economics profession. C-FARE's governing board includes prominent agricultural economists representing a wide range of public and private sector interests.

Chembezi received his doctorate degree in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia with emphasis in price/policy analysis and econometrics. He is a long-time member of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), Southern Agricultural Economics Association (SAEA) and of the American Council on Consumer Interests (ACCI). He is also affiliated with several other professional societies and organizations.