Director, assistant for A.E.R.U.

Press, 9 November 1984, Page 20

Director, assistant for A.E.R.U.

The Agricultural Economics Research Unit at Lincoln College has a new director and also now has an assistant director.

Dr R. G. (Ralph) Lattimore, has been appointed director of A.E.R.U. succeeding Dr Peter Chudleigh who left earlier this year, and Mr R. L. (Ron) Sheppard, has been appointed to the new post of assistant director.

Both take up their appointments immediately. Dr Lattimore is senior lecturer in the agricultural economics and marketing department at the college, and he will continue in this role.

Mr Sheppard was senior research economist with A.E.R.U., with responsibility for projects on marketing, international trade and domestic policy, before taking up his new appointment. Major areas of Dr Lattimore’s work are public policy and international trade. Dr Lattimore returned to Lincoln College in September last year to become senior lecturer. Since then he has also been consultant to M.A.F.

and the Department of Trade and Industry and to the International Development Research Centre, and was recently appointed Government member of the Raspberry Marketing Council and the Raspberry Marketing Export Authority. Before returning to Lincoln College last year Dr Lattimore was associate professor of agricultural economics, teaching agricultural policy, price analysis and marketing, at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

He has also worked for Agriculture Canada, the Canadian counterpart of M.A.F., the Ministry of Agriculture in Brazil, and as an international consultant in Morocco, Brazil, South Korea and Fiji.

Between 1973 and 1975 Dr Lattimore was chief of the commodity markets analysis -unit in the economics division of M.A.F.

Dr Sheppard joined the A.E.R.U. in 1979 as a research economist. Before that he was with the Ford Motor Company of New Zealand from 1976, first as a financial analyst, and later as supervisor with a responsibility for budgeting, cost control and forecasting.

He worked as an economist with the economics division of M.A.F., involved in commodity and external relations work, and later was in charge of the meat and wool group of the commodity section. Dr Lattimore graduated from Lincoln College in 1968 as Bachelor of Agricultural Science, gained a Master of Agricultural Science degree from Massey University in 1971, and a Ph.D. from Purdue University in the United States in 1974.

Mr Sheppard graduated from Lincoln College in 1973 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree in economics with honours, and gained a Bachelor of Business Studies degree in accounting and finance from Massey University in 1981.

Dr Lattimore said the A.E.R.U. would have a “broader agenda” in future, and among the reasons was that the number of chairs had been expanded within the farm management, and agricultural economics group.