Rate My Professor Wendiam Sawadgo

Wendiam Sawadgo is an Associate Professor and Extension Economist in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at Auburn University, a position he has held since August 2020 following the award of tenure and promotion in 2025. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Iowa State University in 2020 and a B.S. in Economic Sciences from Washington State University in 2015, with minors in Mathematics and French. Prior to Auburn, Sawadgo served as a Research and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Economics at Iowa State University from 2015 to 2020. His research program encompasses agricultural marketing, risk management, technology adoption, and the economics of conservation practices, including cover crops and conservation tillage. Through his extension efforts, he delivers timely commodity market updates, educates producers on marketing tools, and informs stakeholders on conservation economics.

Sawadgo has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, with key works such as 'Are Crop Insurance Discount Programs for Cover Crops Effective? Evidence from Iowa' (Agricultural & Environmental Letters, 2024), 'Nonlinear Effects of Conservation Reserve Program Rental Rates on Land Enrollment under Varying Crop Price Regimes' (Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2024, co-authored), 'Pervasive Disadoption Substantially Offsets New Adoption of Cover Crops and No-till' (Choices, 2024, co-authored), and 'The Invisible Elephant: Disadoption of Conservation Practices in the United States' (Choices, 2022, co-authored), which received the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Outstanding Choices Article Award in 2023. Additional publications include 'Do Cost-Share Programs Increase Cover Crop Use? Empirical Evidence from Iowa' (Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 2021) and 'What Drives Landowners’ Conservation Decisions? Evidence from Iowa' (Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 2021). His accolades include the 2024 Best Paper Award from the AAEA Health Economics Section for 'Estimating the Unintended Impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on U.S. Public Health,' the 2021 Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Award for Best Ph.D. Dissertation, and the Earl O. Heady Fellowship. As principal or co-investigator, he has contributed to securing over $1.7 million in research funding credit from sources including the National Science Foundation and the Southern Risk Management Education Center.