Bio sketch:
I received my B.S. in Farm and Ranch Management and M.S. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wyoming. I received my Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from Colorado State University. Before receiving my Ph.D. and becoming a faculty member at UW in the fall of 2005, I served as the Agricultural Marketing Specialist from 1993 to 2005. I delivered extension education to agricultural producers in Wyoming and the West related to commodity marketing, integrated resource management, value-added agriculture and risk management. I have received the Outstanding Extension Award from the American Agricultural Economics Association twice (1997 & 2007) and three regional awards in extension from the Western Agricultural Economics Association (1997, 2005, 2006).

My Vision for This Position: My training gives me the skills to do work in both the traditional agricultural business and natural resource and environmental economics areas. If we view these two traditional fields within the discipline of agricultural economics as a Venn diagram, I am interested in exploring research at the intersection of these two fields. My scholarly activities focus on natural resource-based business economics issues utilizing knowledge and tools from both of the fields mentioned earlier.

Teaching Responsibility and Philosophy: My current teaching responsibilities include agribusiness management, agricultural commodities and futures markets, and advanced agricultural marketing. As someone who has spent years studying economic theory and being avid about its power to provide a useful framework for solving problems, I have become passionate about the importance of students grasping its major concepts. After all, if students understand the theory, they have a set of tools that can help them solve many of the agribusiness or natural resource problems they may face in the future. Unfortunately, students often do not share my passion for understanding theory, and they frequently express resistance to class material heavily laden with theory. How can college teachers overcome this dilemma and have educational impact? I believe you have to motivate learning theory or course concepts through applications that give students a glimpse of the value in applying course content. This is a lesson driven home to me by years of providing extension education to agricultural producers outside the formal classroom in Wyoming and the western region. I draw from my experiences both as a former Extension Specialist and as a classroom instructor to deal with this dilemma of wanting to teach theory and the students being opposed to having “too much theory,” in a course. Some of this must be paying off as I was nominated for the 2007 Lawrence Meeboer Outstanding Teaching Award for the College of Agriculture. This is an award chosen by the students which tells me I must be doing something right, at least in the eyes of some students.


Current Grant/Research Projects:
2008-2010 Assessing Experimental Economics Methods for Policy Analysis. Dale J. Menkhaus, Chris Bastian, Mariah Ehmke, Amy M. Nagler and Nicole S. Ballenger, Cooperative Agreement Between USDA Economic Research Service and University of Wyoming.
     In this project we are using experimental economics to investigates subsidy pass through rates between market actors in private negotiation markets. We will be running experiments with both producers and students as well to investigate external validity of experiments with student subjects.

2004-2008 A New Generation of Farm Policy Tools: Identifying and Assessing Economic Implications. Nicole S. Ballenger, Dale J. Menkhaus, and Chris Bastian. Cooperative Agreement Between USDA Economic Research Service and University of Wyoming.
     In this project we are using experimental economics and stated choice methods to analyze, ex-ante, new farm policy tools being considered for possible use in the future.

2005-2008 Economic Factors Affecting Conservation Easements for Rural Land Preservation: Agricultural Production and Amenity Preservation Through Emerging Markets.” Bastian, C.T. (PI), Co-PIs: D.M. McLeod and D.L. Hoag. Funded by USDA CSREES National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program.
     In this project we are studying both the supply and the demand side of the market for conservation easements. We are using focus group and stated choice techniques to search for possible ways to improve the potential success of transactions and reduce potential matching risks and information asymmetries between landowners and land trusts.


2005-2007 Economically and Environmentally Sustainable Cattle Production Practices During Multiple Years of Drought. Bastian, C.T. (PI), Co-PIs: S. Mooney, S. Paisley, W.M. Frasier, W. Umberger, and M.A. Smith . Funded by UW Agricultural Experiment Station Competitive Grants Program.
     Much of the Western U.S. has faced below normal precipitation for 3 to 4 years consecutively, reducing range productivity, winter-feed production and incomes. There is a paucity of published economic analyses addressing drought management strategies in livestock grazing systems. The objective of this research is to identify, evaluate and communicate the environmental and economic consequences of drought management strategies utilized by a sample of Wyoming cattle producers. This grant is officially over but research in a Master’s thesis here and PhD dissertation at CSU are pointing toward extensions of this work.

2005-2006 An Economic Assessment of Off Road Vehicle Use in Wyoming. Thomas Foulke, David Taylor, Roger Coupal, and Chris Bastian. Funded by Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources Division of State Parks and Historic Sites – Trails Program.
     A survey was conducted of both resident and non-resident ORV permit holders. While the final report has been submitted to the state, several interesting research questions regarding recreation demand modeling and economic impact analysis exist with this segment.
 

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