Bruce L. Ahrendsen Professor of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Agriculture Bldg. Room 214 (479) 575-2258 (Phone) (479) 575-5306 (Fax) ahrend@uark.edu

Dr. Ahrendsen is a native of Iowa with a B.S. degree from Iowa State University and Masters and Ph.D. degrees in economics from North Carolina State University. He was raised on a family farm in Iowa. The farm operation consisted of corn, soybeans, hay, oats, farrow-to-finish hogs, beef cow-calf, and finished cattle. Following graduation from Iowa State University, Dr. Ahrendsen held a position in Iowa with the Farm Service Agency, formerly Farmers Home Administration, where he supervised U.S. Department of Agriculture farm and housing credit programs. Dr. Ahrendsen has been in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Arkansas since 1990. He has taught an undergraduate course in agricultural finance and graduate courses in financial management, quantitative methods, and econometrics.

Dr. Ahrendsen’s major research interests include issues of financial institutions and markets, credit evaluation, financial management, credit programs, risk management, farmland leasing, and asset valuation. He is a principal of the Center for Farm and Rural Business Finance which is jointly sponsored by the University of Arkansas and the University of Illinois. The Center focuses on the issues affecting the availability and effective use of financial capital for farm and rural businesses. He is also a member, including one year as chairman, of a project investigating agricultural finance issues with other researchers from the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Ahrendsen has worked in the Slovak Republic in central Europe where he was invited to provide recommendations to the Ministry of Agriculture relative to the financial difficulties of its agricultural sector. He has also taught in the International MBA program at the Czech University of Agriculture in Prague. In recognition of his scholarly achievements, Dr. Ahrendsen is listed in the International Directory of Distinguished Leadership and Who’s Who in the South and Southwest, and his research was awarded the Distinguished Paper of the Small Firm Financial Research Symposium.

Courses taught:

AGEC 4143 Agricultural Finance (junior/senior level)

AGEC 5143 Financial Management in Agriculture (masters level)

AGEC 5011 Seminar (masters only)
 

The Center for Farm and Rural Business Finance
http://www.ace.uiuc.edu/center/

vita