Biographical Information on Edward D. Lotterman

Ed Lotterman grew up on a family farm in Southwest Minnesota. After graduating from high school in 1967, he enlisted in the Army, serving in the United States, Brazil and the Republic of Vietnam. After his Army service he studied Latin American history at the University of Minnesota and farmed with his mother. From 1972 through 1977 he farmed full time.

He returned to the University of Minnesota in 1978 to finish his B.A. in Latin American area studies and a M.S. in agricultural and applied economics. His research for that degree focused on water policy in the Missouri River Basin. In 1980 he accepted a position with Winrock International Center on a USAID-funded livestock development project in Peru. While there, from 1980 to1982, he also taught economics and farm management at the Universidad Nacional Agraria near Lima.

In 1982 he returned to the U.S. to teach economics at Dordt College, a Christian liberal arts college in Sioux Center, Iowa. He taught much of the economics curriculum and introduced new courses in development economics and economics of natural resources and the environment. He also taught introductory and advanced farm management and agricultural marketing.

He accepted a position as a research fellow in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul in 1986. He administered a project in natural resource management underwritten by the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. He developed, wrote and edited an international, interdisciplinary newsletter, The Common Property Resource Digest. While in this position he also worked with Dr. C. Ford Runge on projects dealing with U.S.-Canadian trade issues and on interactions between U.S. agricultural policy and the environment. He also served as a consultant to a USAID-funded livestock development project in Barbados.

In 1992 he moved to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis where he worked as a regional economist. There he prepared the Ninth District’s section of the Beige Book, the briefing document compiled for each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. He also conducted a quarterly Survey of Agricultural Credit Conditions and wrote extensively for The Region and The Fedgazette, the Minneapolis Fed’s publications for the general public. He also spoke extensively to community and business groups in several states. He left the Minneapolis Fed in September 1999, to pursue a career as a columnist.

During his time at the Fed, he took leave to work on U.S. development projects in Eastern Europe, including three trips to Bulgaria and one to the Czech Republic. He has taught part time ever since leaving his teaching position in Iowa. Since 1986 he has taught at the University of Minnesota, Macalester College, Hamline University, Metro State University, the University of St. Thomas, and at Minneapolis, Lakewood and North Hennepin Community Colleges. He currently has a full-time appointment at Augsburg College in Minneapolis

In addition to his enlisted active duty service from 1967 to 1970, Ed Lotterman has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1976 to the present. He served in infantry and artillery units and as a Foreign Area Specialist for Latin America.

He is married and has adult three children. He lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota.