VERNON – Texas AgriLife Research has hired Dr. Seong Park to fill the newly created research economics position at its Vernon facility to help scientists put a value on the management practices and products they develop through their work.
Park, an assistant professor of agricultural and natural resource economics, started to work on Sept. 1. He will assist AgriLife Research scientists at both the Vernon and Amarillo centers, according to Dr. John Sweeten, AgriLife Research director for both locations.
“When research faculty at Vernon and Amarillo compared each research unit’s strategic plans and ongoing programs, they quickly realized one of the missing pieces is a bona fide economics component that is present from the beginning through the end of the research program,” Sweeten said.
“Dr. Park’s new position allows us to fill a gap in interdisciplinary team research that the faculty has identified,” he said.
“Many research scientists need an economic component added to their research to properly evaluate outcomes,” Park said. “For instance, they can grow and compare plant varieties, but I can help them build in the economic inputs and outputs and eventual outcomes of developing that improved variety.”
Park earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from Kyungpook National University in South Korea in 1999; his master’s degree from West Texas A&M University in 2005; and his doctorate from Oklahoma State University in 2009. Both advanced degrees were in agricultural economics.
His doctoral dissertation was “Economic Analysis of Animal Manure Relative to Commercial Fertilizer in Semiarid Ecosystems” and his master’s thesis was “Economic Optimization of Groundwater Resources in the Texas Panhandle.”
Sweeten said both these studies give him important knowledge about two keys issues to this region, and will aid him as he works with other researchers in these and related areas.
Prior to joining the AgriLife Research staff at Vernon, he was working as a doctoral graduate research associate in the department of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla.
His areas of interest are in environmental/natural resource economics, econometrics, mathematical programming, production economics, risk management and rural development.
In his new position, Park said he will not only work with crop and livestock production, but also with watershed protection, groundwater modeling and nitrates in the water, the Ogallala Aquifer program, air quality federal initiative, as well as irrigation water management and bioenergy feedstocks.
“I will learn what the other researchers need from an economics perspective and understand how I can collaborate and cooperate with them,” he said.
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