Biographies of Conference Participants
January 19-20, 2010
(Please note: Where
available, links are provided from the
conference program to online
biographies of conference participants.)
Session 2:
Tom Shenstone
of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
has extensive experience in identifying, negotiating and implementing policy
and program initiatives for the federal government. He has managed policy
development across a broad range of departments, and issues from
agriculture, economic development, labor market policy, trade policy,
regulatory affairs, and in land claims settlement. Mr. Shenstone advised
such departs as the Department of Finance, the Privy Council Office,
Inter-Governmental Affairs and the Treasury Board Secretariat, and in major
line departments including Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, Human Resource
Development Canada, and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Currently, Mr.
Shenstone is Director-General, Research and Analysis in the Strategic Policy
Branch of Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, in effect the Department’s Chief
Economist, and the head of the Canadian delegation to the Committee on
Agriculture of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He
has twice received the Deputy Minister’s commendation award recognizing
exceptional contributions to AAFC. Tom has an Honors Bachelor of Arts degree
in Economics from the University of Toronto and a Master of Science degree
in Economics from the London School of Economics.
Carmel Cahill
is head of the Policy and Trade Adjustment Division at OECD based in Paris,
France. Ms. Cahill heads a team of multidisciplinary experts that conduct
research on a wide-range of agricultural issues such as protection
subsidies, structural-adjustment issues, income risk management and broader
agriculture policies. Prior to joining OECD, Ms. Cahill worked within the
Irish government, holding various positions which help bring important
experience in governmental organizational work and service to OECD. She
holds an M.A. degree in economics from the National University of Ireland
and a M.Sc. degree in statistics from Trinity College, Dublin.
Roger Martini
is an Agricultural Policy Analyst in the OECD Trade and Agriculture
Directorate. Before joining the OECD in 2002, he worked for Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada in the area of environmental policy. His responsibilities
at the OECD include the Policy Evaluation Model (PEM), used to investigate
production, trade and welfare impacts of agricultural policies. Most
recently, he is the co-author of the study Evaluation of Agricultural Policy
reforms in Japan.
Frank Van
Tongeren is a Senior Economist at OECD’s Trade and Agricultural
Directorate where he focuses on international trade and development policy
issues. Prior to working with OECD, Mr. Van Tongeren has bought with him
years of agricultural economic experience including working as head of
international trade at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute and
lecturing on economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the Higher
School of Economics in Moscou, Wageningen University. He holds a Ph.D. in
Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam.
|
Alanna
Ko |
Alanna Koch was appointed Deputy Minister of Saskatchewan Agriculture
(Canada) in November 2007.
Alanna Koch has been involved in the agriculture industry, both professionally and
personally, for most of her life. For the two years prior to her appointment
as the Deputy Minister of Agriculture for the Government of Saskatchewan,
she worked with the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance (CAFTA)—an
organization that advocates an open and fair trading environment for
agriculture and agri-food products—first as
Vice-President and then as President. Her background in agriculture and
agricultural policy also includes the roles of Director with Agricore
United, Executive Director with the Western Canadian Wheat Growers and
Director of the George Morris Centre at the University of Guelph.
Alanna
has also helped develop agricultural extension services in Atlantic Canada,
served as a national judge for Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers’ program
and as a committee member for Canadian Western Agribition.
She has a Chartered
Director designation from the Directors College, a program of the Conference
Board of Canada and the Michael D. DeGroote School of Business at McMaster
University. She is a graduate of the Canadian Agriculture Lifetime
Leadership program and an Honorary Life Member of the Saskatchewan Institute
of Agrologists.
Alanna,
with her husband, Gerry Hertz, owns and operates a grain farm at Edenwold,
Saskatchewan. They have two young daughters who keep them very busy. They
are also very involved in their small community of Edenwold.
|
Stephanie
Mercier |
Dr.
Stephanie Mercier is the chief economist
for the Democratic staff of the Senate Agriculture Committee, a position she
has held since March of 1997, for the last four months under the
chairmanship of Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. 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.
The key issues she currently covers for the Committee include international
trade policy, crop insurance, and disaster programs.
An Iowa native, Dr.
Mercier has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Washington University in
St. Louis and a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Iowa State University.
Session 3:
Olga Melyukhina
is an Agricultural Policy Analyst in the OECD Trade and Agriculture
Directorate. Before joining the OECD in 1998, she was an agricultural
researcher in Moscow. Her work at OECD concerns agricultural policy analysis
and the evaluation of agricultural support. Ms Melyukhina is the co-author
of OECD Agricultural Policy Reviews for Ukraine, Brazil, and South
Africa, OECD Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation reports
and the author of a number of publications on the evaluation of agricultural
support.
|
Anne Effland |
Anne Effland is a research social scientist
and U.S. farm policy specialist at the Economic Research Service (ERS) of
the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She holds a Ph.D. from Iowa State
University and has been at ERS since 1990. She has been involved for the
past 10 years with both OECD and WTO domestic support measurement work,
including as a member of the OECD experts group that produced the recent
redesign of the PSE classification system.
|
Cameron
Short |
Cameron Short has been with Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) in various capacities since 1995 and is currently
Executive Directorof the Policy Analysis Division. As such, he is
responsible for the international market analysis and outlook, baseline and
scenario analysis for the Canadian agriculture and agri-food sectors,
monitoring and analysis of international policy issues, managing AAFC's
relationship with the OECD, collection and analysis of information about
government support for World trade Organization notification, the OECD PSE
calculation and domestic release.
As Director of the
Forecasting and Quantitative Analysis Division at AAFC, he has had
responsibility for farm level analysis and modeling, program analysis and
modeling and farm sector performance and outlook. He has also worked on
various other issues at AAFC, such as regulatory analysis (health and
safety, food labelling,) and cost recovery, and served as the AAFC expert
for the development of the OECD Policy Evaluation Matrix model.
From 1998-99 he was
Advisor on the CIDA / PT. Hickling Indonesia Development Planning Assistance
Project in the Indonesian National Development Planning Agency (BAPPENAS).
He was responsible for analysis and advice for BAPPENAS (planning
department) on wide range of economic issues including, rice pricing and
trade policy, fertilizer decontrol and trade, food security, rural labour
market analysis, sugar policy, small scale industries, and water sector
reform.
From 1985-1994 he was
Senior Economist and then Director of the Carleton University / CIDA Long
Range Planning Project in the Ministry of Planning, Kenya. In that capacity,
he was responsible for advice and analysis on a wide range of long range
policy issues including food security, population, health and HIV, and
agricultural and other sectoral policy. Several long range planning models
were developed for projecting population growth, impact of HIV, school
enrolment, a macroeconomic model and multi-year CGE model. He led two major
labour force surveys in Kenya to determine rural and urban labour force
participation rates and unemployment rates, input output table revisions,
and an aerial land use survey.
Other experience
includes consulting work for the Agriculture and Rural Development
Department of the World Bank in Washington, the CIDA Social Development
Priorities into the Philippine Development Assistance Programme of the
Canada Philippines NGO umbrella group, the International Institute for
Tropical Agriculture research on natural resource management in the humid
forest zone in Cameroon; five years as an assistant professor of
Agricultural Economics, at the University of British Columbia, five years at
the Iowa State University Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development, and
two years as a secondary teacher in Malawi.
Dr. Short has a PhD in
Economics from Iowa State University, and an MSc and BA from the University
of British Columbia.
Hayden Milberg serves as Senior Economist
to Senator Saxby Chambliss, Ranking Republican Member, for the Senate
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry. Hayden is the economist for
the Republican staff and lead for trade and biotechnology issues.
Mr. Milberg joined the
committee staff after working for the National Corn Growers Association in
Washington, DC, and as Legislative Director to Representative Tom Latham
(IA-5) during the 106th and 107th Congresses. Prior to Representative
Latham, Mr. Milberg served on the staffs of Representatives Zach Wamp (TN-3)
and Representative Frank Riggs (CA-1).
Mr. Milberg earned his
bachelor's degree from Tufts University (1993) and a Masters of Public
Policy (MPP) from the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Georgetown
University (1998).
|
Clemens
Boonekamp |
Clemens Boonekamp is the Director of
the World Trade Organization's Agriculture and
Commodities Division.
A native of the Netherlands, he received bachelor's,
master's and doctoral degrees in economics from Rhodes University, Simon
Fraser University and Brown University, respectively.
He has been with the WTO since 1991 and has served
with the Trade Policies Review Division and the External Relations Division.
He was Director of the Trade Policies Review Division from 1998-2009, when
he was appointed to his current position. Prior to the WTO, he was on the
economics faculty of the University of British Colombia and was a senior
economist with the International Monetary Fund.
He has been published in economics journals in
Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Session 4:
|
Carlos
Vazquez |
Carlos Vazquez is an
Economist from Mexico’s Institute of Technology (ITAM) and a graduate from
the Public Policy Program of Georgetown University. He has spent much
of his professional life serving in Mexico’s public sector, primarily within
the Ministry of Treasury and the Ministry of Agriculture.
Mr. Vazquez was appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture
of Mexico, Francisco Mayorga. since 2006, to head SAGARPA’s
representation office in the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC.
Prior to his designation as Minister of Agricultural
Affairs to the US, he was the Director General for Evaluation of Direct
Income Support Programs in ASERCA, among his responsibilities where the
design and implementation of the regulations and rules of operation for the
award and distribution of support payments to the countryside.
Roger Martini
is an Agricultural Policy Analyst in the OECD Trade and Agriculture
Directorate. Before joining the OECD in 2002, he worked for Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada in the area of environmental policy. His responsibilities
at the OECD include the Policy Evaluation Model (PEM), used to investigate
production, trade and welfare impacts of agricultural policies. Most
recently, he is the co-author of the study Evaluation of Agricultural Policy
reforms in Japan.
Dimitris
Diakosavvas is a Senior Economist in the Agricultural Policies and
Environment Division of the OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate, where he
has worked since 1989, following a three year appointment at FAO where he
worked on agricultural policies in developing countries, including food
security and the long-term trend of the terms of trade of primary
commodities. His main areas of expertise are in agricultural trade and
environmental policy, in particular rural development, and the measurement
and evaluation of agricultural policies. Dimitris contributes to the OECD
Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation reports, and is the main
author of a number of publications on the evaluation of agricultural
policies, including Evaluation of the Uruguay Round Agreement on
Agriculture, the Arable Crop Study and the
Methods to Monitor and Evaluate the Impacts of
Agricultural
Policies on Rural Development OECD study.
Session 5:
|
Gregg
Young |
Gregg Young is Assistant Deputy
Administrator, Office of Negotiations and Agreements with the Foreign
Agricultural Service, USDA.
The Office of Negotiations and Agreements in USDA/FAS is responsible for
multilateral and bilateral agricultural negotiations and monitoring and
enforcement of active trade agreements. Mr. Young focuses particularly on
the Doha Development Agenda agricultural negotiations within the World Trade
Organization and agricultural policy development in the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He has served in this role
since 2005. Previously Mr. Young served four years at the U.S. Mission to
the World Trade Organization (2001-2005) in Geneva, Switzerland, with a
primary focus on agricultural negotiations and where he served as
Chairperson for the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Committee from April 2004
until March 2006.
Mr. Young began has career in the Foreign Agricultural Service as a dairy
analyst. As a Foreign Service Officer his first tour was covering the
Balkans (Romania and Bulgaria) while resided in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. From
1991 until 1995 he was the Director, U.S. Agricultural Trade Office in
Hamburg, Germany. Between then and his Geneva tour he oversaw the start-up
of the new SPS Committee work in FAS’ Office of Food Safety and Technical
Services, and included coordination on a wide variety of sanitary and
phytosanitary issues, including participation in Codex policy formulation.
Gregg grew up in production agricultural in Colorado. He obtained a
Bachelor of Science in World Agriculture at Colorado State University in
Fort Collins, Colorado and followed with a masters degree in (Diplom) in
Agricultural Economics at the Universität Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany.
Gregg is married and has three boys.
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