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By Marion Nestle

February 25 2026

R.I.P. Ray Goldberg, “the father of agribusiness”

Ray Goldberg died last week at the age of 99. He was still going pretty strong the last time I saw him last fall at the annual meeting of PAPSAC (Private and Public Scientific, Academic and Consumer Food Policy Group) at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Edmund O’Keeffe, photo

We were an unlikely pair to know each other for so long and to care about each other so deeply.

When I first met him in the early 1990s, Ray was professor of agribusiness (a term he coined) at the Harvard Business School, as representative of Big Ag as anyone could be. When he invited me to participate in the newly formed PAPSAC, I could not imagine why he would want me there or why I should go.

Contrary to Ray’s recollection, I did not attend the first meeting. I would have had to pay my own expenses, which seemed outrageous given that so many of the participants were CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and flew to Boston via private jet.

The second year, Ray said they would pay for my travel and persuaded me that the meeting would be worth attending. Its purpose, he explained, was to bring food business leaders and consumer activists together to share views and to reach mutual understanding.

My interpretation: Ray thought that if we saw how caring the CEOs of agribusiness firms were about feeding the world, we would not object so much to what they did. That never worked, but he kept on trying. And I kept on attending, for more than 25 years.

My rationale:

Ray was impossible to say no to.
I could learn how agribusiness leaders thought about what they were doing.
I could say what I thought in a presentation pretty much every year.

Two highlights:

I witnessed the CEOs of Pioneer Hi-Bred and other agbiotech companies scream at the CEO of Monsanto for alienating the public about genetically modified crops and ruining their businesses.
I attended the session when Ray had the bright idea of showing the film Food, Inc to the group (he thought they ought to see it). This did not go over well, and I joined its director, Robby Kenner, in fielding audience attacks.

Despite what I consider to be a total contradiction between the profit goals of agribusiness and the goals of public healthl, Ray continued to insist that we all needed to listen to each other.

His sunny view of humanity is best illustrated by his book Food Citizenship, which I wrote about in 2018 when it first came out.

The book consists of Ray’s interviews with dozens of PAPSAC participants, beginning with his interview with me. [The interviews were videotaped and are available at the Oxford University Press website. The video of Ray’s interview with me is posted here.]

I always felt like a total outsider at this meeting, and was surprised to find myself at the core of Ray’s attempts to achieve mutual understanding among participants.

We could all use more of that.

As is clear from our interview and Ray’s response to my responses to his questions, we viewed the world of agribusiness very differently.

But I loved him, and will miss him.

The post R.I.P. Ray Goldberg, “the father of agribusiness” appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle

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