Philip H. Howard

Philip H. Howard is a faculty member in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University. He is the author of Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat? (2016, Bloomsbury Academic). He was president of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society from 2015 to 2016, and is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

His research interests focus on exploring food system changes, particularly trends of industry consolidation, and their impacts on sustainability. He uses visualization extensively in his research and outreach, including characterizing levels of economic concentration in industries such as processed organic foods, beer, wine and seeds. The visualizations have been featured in numerous outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Ecologist, E-The Environmental Magazine, and Mother Earth News.

He holds a PhD in Rural Sociology from the University of Missouri. He conducted research at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 2002 to 2006, and was a visiting scholar in the Division of Nutrition at the University of Utah in 2013-2014.