Allan Gray

Professor and Land O’Lakes Chair in Food and Agribusiness, Department of Agriculture Economics

Allan Gray serves as director of the Center for Food and Agricultural Business and the MS-MBA in Food and Agribusiness Management. He joined the agricultural economics faculty at Purdue University in August 1998. Allan currently holds the position of Land O’Lakes Chair in Food and Agribusiness.

As director, Allan provides strategic direction for the center and MS-MBA in Food and Agribusiness Management, a dual-degree, online program offered in partnership by Purdue and Indiana University. He works with food and agribusiness managers in the center’s professional development seminars and workshops, while also continuing to teach strategic agribusiness management in the undergraduate, master’s and MS-MBA programs.

Allan’s research interests are agribusiness management, strategic planning, decision making in uncertain environments and simulation. He also works on the Large Commercial Producer Survey, conducted every five years by the center, which explores the attitudes and buying behaviors of large commercial producers. In addition, Allan has researched the management implications of real-options thinking, the risks and returns to alternative vertical business relationships and the human capital constraints of agribusinesses.

He has won numerous awards, including the American Agricultural Economics Association’s (AAEA) Distinguished Extension/Outreach Program Award, the Purdue University Dean’s Team Award and the United States Distance Learning Association’s Excellence in Distance Teaching Award. In 2012, he received the inaugural Early Career Leadership Award from the National Association of Agricultural Economics Administrators, a subsection of AAEA.

A native Texan, Allan and his wife, Stephanie, have two daughters and a son.

P: (765) 494-4323     E: gray@purdue.edu