Peter Goldsmith

Dr. Peter Goldsmith is a Director at HighQuest Partners.  At HighQuest, he focuses on agribusiness strategy across the value chain.  Dr. Goldsmith has consulted to small scale farmer, co-ops, processors and NGO's and investors.  

 

 Dr. Goldsmith graduated in 1995 from the Ohio State University with a PhD in Agricultural Economics.  From 1995-1999 he worked as an Assistant Professor of Agribusiness, McGill University in Montreal and is currently an Associate Professor of Agribusiness Management in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois.  In addition to his PhD, Dr. Goldsmith has received an MBA in Finance, and undergraduate degrees in Dairy Science and Political Science. 

He was the 1997 winner of the Edwin G. Nourse award for outstanding doctoral research on cooperatives. In November 2003 he was appointed the National Soybean Research Laboratory Fellow in Agricultural Strategy.  In 2005 Dr. Goldsmith was awarded a Fulbright Research Scholarship to study safety and quality in global agri-food supply chains while at the Agrocampus in Rennes, France. He, with his colleagues, was also awarded the 2005 Outstanding or Innovative Program-Team Award for "Marketmaker: An Online Marketing Tool to Connect Farmer Entrepreneurs to Consumer Markets."  In 2006 Dr. Goldsmith was named the Executive Director of the National Soybean Research Laboratory in Urbana, Illinois.  In 2007 he was named the Soybean Industry Endowed Associate Professor in Agriculture Strategy. Dr. Goldsmith was recently appointed as an associate faculty member in the Business, Economics, and Law Research Group of the newly formed Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois. In 2008, he was named the Executive Editor of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review. In 2009, he was named to the USDA’s International Agribusiness Education Taskforce, Global Advisor to the Galtere AgriBusiness Fund, a member of the Academic Board of the Masters of Agribusiness Program at the University of Belgrano in Argentina, and a member of the advisory boards of the Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies and the Center for Latin American Studies.

His research interest is structural change in global agro-industrial markets and its affect on agribusinesses and farmers.  Specific topics include: intellectual property management, biotechnology, food safety, supply chain management, biofuel business economics, the Brazilian and Argentinean agribusiness complex, and livestock and grain marketing channels. 

Dr. Goldsmith has been a visiting lecturer in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America, and published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, numerous book chapters and articles in scientific journals and the popular press. He currently serves as the Executive Editor of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, is a member of the foreign editorial board of the Journal on Chain and Network Science and was recently a guest editor for Choices.

Before embarking on a career in academia, Dr. Goldsmith worked in the dairy industry as the assistant general manager of a cooperative and as a herdsman; and as a large animal specialist in the United States Peace Corps in South America.  

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