This week during a post-exam glass-of-wine downtime Ariel and I started chatting about what parts of the MFRE program we were enjoying, what we weren’t and the gaps we saw currently. It turned out to be a really productive conversation that finished with an idea I want to share here with my classmates.
Our program is intensive and we are learning from some remarkable professors. We are busy learning about pricing models, ways to analyze quantitative data and development projects, as well as how to trade in futures markets.
However something is missing. We felt a gap in our understanding of what was happening in the world now. Being able to be informed enough to ask the right questions is fundamentally important to learning, however I feel a little naïve about current movements in research, debate and policy related to agricultural economics.
So we got thinking….
I mentioned to Ariel that this week I was planning on taking a week off from trading and dedicate my blog to a literature review of a recent journal article related to the futures market and trading more generally.
As I spoke, a light bulb went off in both our heads! That is what we are missing. We are simply not reading enough. We briefly paused and thought to ourselves, ‘How the hell am I going to fit time for this into my current schedule?’ Such notions were quickly pushed aside as we realized the huge opportunity we had to gain by simply reading more, understanding the research that was being performed and critiquing what was out there.
So we are setting up a “Reading Group”, that will be trial based for the remainder of Term 1 with hopes of cementing something more formal in Term 2. We hope to invite Professors to share their work with us (I’m looking at you Sumeet) as well as help us to guide us in our reading. In time, we hope to squeeze a little bit of funding from LFS (I’m looking at you Pradip!) to enable us to have coffee and baked goods to aid the discussion! It won’t be compulsory, graded, or intimidating, but it will be exciting, full of learning and hopefully insightful!
Our idea has already been activated by Ariel looking at the seminal ‘How to Understand High Food Prices’ by Christopher L. Gilbert, which appeared in the Journal of Agricultural Economics. We felt it was a good starting base and related to our 501 trading exercise as well as the theoretical content. Hopefully it will wet enough appetites to garner some interest!
In the lab on Tuesday I hope to introduce our idea as well as briefly look at a current journal article. Watch this space because I am still deciding!!
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