Dr. Stephanie Mercier is a Senior Policy Adviser at the Farm Journal Foundation. An Iowa native, she has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Iowa State University.

Previous to her work at the Foundation, she served as team leader for the Trade Policy and Programs area of the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In her nine years at ERS, she worked on both domestic commodity programs and trade policy issues. On the Hill, she covered a wide variety of issues for the Committee, among them domestic farm programs, climate change, risk management policy, international agricultural trade, agricultural development, and food aid policy. She then served from 1997-2011 as chief economist for the Democratic staff of the Senate Agriculture Committee. After retiring from the Committee in 2011, she worked as an independent agricultural policy consultant on projects in the areas of domestic farm and risk management programs, environmental policy, federal agricultural budgets, domestic nutrition assistance programs, and international food security and agricultural development policy.