Agribusiness

Dr Sosheel Godfrey

Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Economics Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) with policy-focused research on Farm Economics, Agribusiness Value Chains and Consumer choice

Sosheel serves as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences (SAEVS) at Charles Sturt University (CSU), based at the Wagga Wagga campus. He was awarded his PhD at CSU in 2016. His research interests include farm business risk analysis, agribusiness value chain analysis and market research on consumer behaviour.

Before commencing doctoral studies, he worked for 11 years in the development sectors in the UK and Pakistan, of which four years were with ACIAR.

In his CSU academic role, Sosheel has two large service subjects with an average count of 250 students in a session at an undergraduate and post-graduate level. The academic role, apart from teaching, involves collaborating with staff to transform the course curriculum, revising and grading assessments and evaluating student performance, all focused at ensuring that students fulfil their full academic potential. Sosheel also supervises Honours and PhD students, conducts research and has been publishing findings in academic journals. He has secured competitive research grants.

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Sosheel’s broad scope of research interests has attracted four students currently pursuing PhD studies, including an experienced Australian Agriculture extension officer and three international students from Bhutan, China and Malawi. He is the Principal supervisor for two students and co-supervising the two other students. Three of these PhD students’ research is focused on farm profitability associated with cropping and livestock based on Australian farming systems. The Fourth student is studying smallholder livelihoods in Malawi, focusing on vegetable farming.

He has successfully supervised four honours and one master’s student and is currently supervising another honours student. These students researched Samoan sheep production economics and value chains (2 students), brand loyalty for wine in Australia, understanding the values of vegans and livestock producers and assessing farm business risk for grain production.

In his role as subject convenor and coordinator for two large service subjects that serve across a range of course progressions, discipline areas, and levels, Sosheel has substantially revised and updated course materials in line with student feedback and industry expectations. His teaching philosophy is to link academic practice with industry ready skills. Sosheel also teaches and mentors into three other SAEVS subjects, demonstrating teamwork.

From a value chain perspective of “farm to fork”, at the farm end, Sosheel’s research is focused on farm profitability, addressing business and financial risk in agriculture through the application of modern tools such as @RISK to model a range of farming systems. At the fork end, Sosheel studies consumer behaviour using Conjoint Analysis and Max Diff methods to understand consumer preferences. Sosheel has documented these results in ten refereed journal publications, as catalogued in CSU Research Outputs (CRO).

His research expertise has been recognised at the national level through collaboration within and outside CSU, having secured three competitive grants totalling AUD 1.3 million, including one as Chief Investigator with the SOIL CRC. At the international level, he is collaborating with research teams from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), UK’s Harper Adams University and COMSATS University in Pakistan. As a member of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES), he contributes new research papers at the annual conferences.