Derek Byerlee

Derek Byerlee is an Independent Researcher based on Washington DC. He was an Assistant and Associate Professor at Michigan State University, 1971-78, where he was posted in 1973-74 at Njala University College, Sierra Leone. In 1978 he joined the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), based in Mexico and South Asia, and spent the bulk of his career there, working as an economist and research manager.  At CIMMYT he published widely on efficiency of research systems, spillovers, and sustaining productivity in post- green revolution agriculture.  He was a Visiting Professor, 1986, at the University of Minnesota; and in 1992 at Cornell University.

In 1994, he joined the World Bank as a Lead Economist, focusing on building capacity of national research systems and finding innovative approaches to funding and organizing agricultural research, including emerging challenges in biotechnology policy.  From 2003 to 2008, he provided strategic direction and led policy work for the agricultural and rural sector in the World Bank.  He was also Lead Economist for the Agricultural and Rural Development in the Country Office for Ethiopia and Sudan, based in Addis Ababa.  He finished his career in the Bank by co-directing preparation of the Bank’s flagship World Development Report 2008, the first on agriculture since 1982.

Since leaving the World Bank, he has continued working with a number of international organizations with an emphasis on investment in agribusiness, large-scale farming and plantations, and intensification and land use. He also began to write and publish on agricultural history exploring the rise, fall and impacts of plantation agriculture for tropical commodities. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association of Agricultural Economists in 2004.