The International Association of Agricultural Economists was formed in 1929 as a result of meetings organized by
Leonard Knight Elmhirst and Carl Edwin Ladd. These were in part a response to the agricultural depression of the 1920s, following
World War I. The meetings were hosted by Elmhirst and his wife, heiress
Dorothy Payne Whitney, at their home
Dartington Hall in
Devon, England.
George F. Warren (USA) and
Max Sering (Germany) were the first co-vice presidents. Subsequent conferences were held at
Bad Eilsen, Germany (1934),
St. Andrews, Scotland (1936) and
Macdonald College,
Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue,
Quebec, Canada (1938).), Organizers planned to hold a sixth conference in Hungary in 1941, In 1961, at the Eleventh International Conference of Agricultural Economists in Mexico, the name of the organization was officially changed to "International Association of Agricultural Economists" (IAAE), with the name "International Conference of Agricultural Economists" (ICAE) being retained for the actual conference. The organization supported publication of the multi-volume
World Atlas of Agriculture (1969-1976), collecting together text, maps, charts, and statistics about hundreds of countries. "The first complete coverage of world land-use patterns on a uniform basis and on a large scale", it was described as "a massive contribution to our knowledge of land-use patterns". Decades later, the
World Atlas of Agriculture was used to create the Historical Land Use Database 1960 (HISLU60). The HISLU60 digital database provides an important baseline for historical European land-use and has been used to analyze European land cover trends, revealing dramatic overall changes over time. At the Nineteenth International Conference of Agricultural Economists in
Málaga, Spain, in 1985, the founding of the journal
Agricultural Economics: The Journal of the International Association of Agricultural Economists was announced. The first issue of
Agricultural Economics was published in 1986 by
Blackwell Publishing in Oxford. The first woman to become president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists was
Uma Lele. Lele became president-elect in July 2018, and president in August 2021. She is also the first woman to receive a PhD in Applied Economics from Cornell University. IAAE recognizes outstanding contributions in the field of agricultural economics through a number of awards. Receiving an IAAE Honorary Life Membership is the equivalent of becoming a Fellow in other professional associations. == References ==