Professor Forest Reinhardt welcomes students with interest in food and agribusiness to apply for this Independent Project opportunity in spring.

Students who enroll in this Independent Project in Food and Agribusiness will each write a paper, individually or as part of a group of two or three, about a business issue in food and agriculture. They will also attend four sessions over the course of the spring term (see below).

Interested students or groups of students should consult with Professor Reinhardt during fall term and submit project proposals prior to the end of that term. Students whose projects are selected will meet four times during the course of spring term to learn about each other's topics, exchange ideas about research tactics, and talk more generally about the world food system, using some of HBS's best cases on the subject. These sessions will take place on the following Mondays on the X schedule from 3:10 PM - 5:10 PM: January 23, February 6, February 27, and April 10. Attendance at these sessions is mandatory.

This independent project is intended to give students a chance to integrate what they have learned in the RC to a topic of their choosing in a critically important industry, and to expose themselves to the diversity of challenges and opportunities that firms in the agribusiness sector face.

The field work will involve synthesizing information about an agricultural or food-related problem that could be firm-level, systemic, or both. For example, a good paper might be written on an American firm's decision to export agricultural products to Japan, or about the ways in which the new climate bill affords opportunities for US soybean farmers, or about the opportunities for aquaculture in Kenya. In any of these cases the students will get a deep understanding of the particulars of an agricultural situation as these are affected by science, technology, economics, politics, and law.

Interested students should reach out directly to Professor Reinhardt to share project ideas in fall term. Registration will then take place in December within the online IP registration tool (opening for spring on December 7, 2022). Students will select Independent Project (IP) in Food and Agribusiness.