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Yann de Mey

@yanndemey.bsky.social

Associate Professor in Agricultural Business Economics @WUR, working on agricultural risk analysis, risk management and resilience | @AgEconMeet | 🇧🇪 living in 🇳🇱 | Feminist

542 Posts788 Follower 865 Folgt

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 4d ago

Today we finished five intensive and inspiring Summer School days at @w-u-r.bsky.social, where we explored how to characterize, analyse and manage the many risks facing agriculture and how to strengthen its resilience! Thanks to all participants 🙏

AEA Data Editor @aeadata.bsky.social · last mo.

Lesson? I don't know about the econometrics - but don't use --quietly-- in #Stata ! (or "source()" without "echo=TRUE" in #R, or drop the ";" in #MATLAB). Good night, and good computing!

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This cow chilling at the river Rhine here in @gemeentewageningen.bsky.social might just be my spirit animal of the day!

Robert Finger @robertfinger.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Probabilistic Tillage Mapping at Scale: Fusing Predictions from a Theory-Based Agronomic Model and a Bayesian Neural Network' Joins us next week for a FRIES Seminar by Alexa Leyens, University of Bonn July 13 at ETH or via zoom ethz.zoom.us/j/61682523452 FRIES frieseth.wixsite.com/friesethz

Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🚨 We still have spots available! 🚨 Interested in deepening your understanding of risk analysis, risk management, and resilience in agriculture? Join us in our WASS PhD Summer School at Wageningen University & Research!

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I accidentally emailed the wrong Stelios and was rewarded with the best reply of the year so far 😇 🫒🇬🇷❤️

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I increasingly cross-check the full reference list of work submitted by students (BSc-MSc-PhD). Where in the past I would mostly do a random check and quick scanning of relevant literature, I now deliberately click and search myself to rule our hallucinated references.

Tobias Dalhaus @tobidal.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Check out our new special issue in the Agricultural Finance Review on 'Financing Resilient Food Systems' including papers from many great authors editorial with @jisangyu.bsky.social Aleks Schaefer and @yanndemey.bsky.social doi.org/10.1108/AFR-...

Guest editorial: Financing resilient food systems

Recently, external shocks have greatly affected our food systems. Geopolitical crises, extreme weather and pandemics have caused substantial volatility in food production and prices, thereby threateni...

doi.org

Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The rise and fall of instrumental variables and twoway fixed effects. From: arxiv.org/abs/2501.06873

Figure showing the proliferation of methods used in NBER and CEPR working papers. Instrumental variables (IV) peak around 2010, twoway fixed effects (TWFE) five years later.

Paolo Crosetto @paolocrosetto.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🚨Today 4pm CET🚨 PCI Webinar: The Drain of Scientific Publishing: why publishing is becoming a burden for science and how to fix it An overview talk based on three papers on #ScientificPublishing, where it stands & how to fix it. Plus dad jokes and bad acronyms. peercommunityin.org/pci-webinar-...

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A journal just sent me a review request. But we have a paper "with editor", i.e. stuck at the first stage after submission for 4 months now. Is it understandable that I request an update on that end first, before agreeing to do work for them? #notaskingforafriend

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 6mo ago

@planetmoney.bsky.social I love the latest episode on Replication games!! Definitely a most listen for any scientist podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/p...

Don't hate the replicator, hate the game

Podcast Episode · Planet Money · 27 February · 36m

podcasts.apple.com

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Final days to apply!

Yann de Mey@yanndemey.bsky.social · 7mo ago

We are hiring at the Assistant Professor level! The position is open to anyone with a quantitative agri-business research and teaching profile. Feel free to reach out if you have questions 🙏 www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/a...

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Assistant Professor Economic Modelling of Farms and Firms in Food Supply Chains

Do you want to support economic decision making and sustainable transitions in food supply chains? Do you have a passion for teaching empirical modelling of farms and firms in food supply chains? Then...

wur.nl

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Another banger by Paolo Crosetto, Pablo Gómez Barreiro, and Mark Austin Hanson! While special issues with guest editors are not a problem in themselves, journals that build a business model around then invites people to start gaming the system...

Mark A. Hanson@hansonmark.bsky.social · 8mo ago

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Very grateful to have received this ERAE Reviewer certificate. But I am passing this on to @khoavuumn.bsky.social in recognition of his unique commitment to our profession. Should have been his in the first place.

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 8mo ago

And now a podcast segment is out on the Food for Europe podcast frol the EU: podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/f...

64. Agri-Food Days 2025: focus on food security

Podcast Episode · Food for Europe · 23/12/2025 · 22m

podcasts.apple.com

Yann de Mey@yanndemey.bsky.social · 9mo ago

It was amazing to take part in the 🌽 EU Agri-Food Days 🧑‍🌾 at the European Commission as a panelist in the policy session on "Building a resilient agri-food sector".

David Schindler @david-schindler.de · 8mo ago

Utrecht University abolishes its English language bachelor's program in economics and replaces it with a Dutch one. They told staff (~30% international) the week before Christmas. Layoffs seem likely now. Unwarranted lobotomy is the only word I can find for it... dub.uu.nl/en/news/econ...

Economics programme in shock after sudden cancellation of English-taught track

The Bachelor's programme in Economics & Business Economics will only be offered in Dutch from 2029 onwards, the Executive Board announced on Tuesday. The news came as a complete surprise to the econom...

dub.uu.nl

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 9mo ago

The renewed farmers’ protests today highlight the persistence of European agricultural policy tensions. Condemning the associated violence and destructive actions is necessary. At the same time, preventing its recurrence requires understanding why farmers mobilize in the first place.

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 9mo ago

It was amazing to take part in the 🌽 EU Agri-Food Days 🧑‍🌾 at the European Commission as a panelist in the policy session on "Building a resilient agri-food sector".

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 9mo ago

Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...

Will you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course in the future?
No.

Why won’t you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course?
These tools are useful for coding (see this for my personal take on this).

However, they’re only useful if you know what you’re doing first. If you skip the learning-the-process-of-writing-code step and just copy/paste output from ChatGPT, you will not learn. You cannot learn. You cannot improve. You will not understand the code.

In that post, it warns that you cannot use it as a beginner:

…to use Databot effectively and safely, you still need the skills of a data scientist: background and domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability.

There is no LLM-based shortcut to those skills. You cannot LLM your way into domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, or coding ability.

The only way to gain domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability is to struggle. To get errors. To google those errors. To look over the documentation. To copy/paste your own code and adapt it for different purposes. To explore messy datasets. To struggle to clean those datasets. To spend an hour looking for a missing comma.

This isn’t a form of programming hazing, like “I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow and now you must too.” It’s the actual process of learning and growing and developing and improving. You’ve gotta struggle.

This Tumblr post puts it well (it’s about art specifically, but it applies to coding and data analysis too):

Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner’s roadblock to art isn’t even technical skill it’s frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach’s capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That’s how you build on the technical skill. Throw that “won’t even start because I’m afraid it won’t be perfect” shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck. (The original post has disappeared, but here’s a reblog.)

It’s hard, but struggling is the only way to learn anything.

You might not enjoy code as much as Williams does (or I do), but there’s still value in maintaining codings skills as you improve and learn more. You don’t want your skills to atrophy.

As I discuss here, when I do use LLMs for coding-related tasks, I purposely throw as much friction into the process as possible:

To avoid falling into over-reliance on LLM-assisted code help, I add as much friction into my workflow as possible. I only use GitHub Copilot and Claude in the browser, not through the chat sidebar in Positron or Visual Studio Code. I treat the code it generates like random answers from StackOverflow or blog posts and generally rewrite it completely. I disable the inline LLM-based auto complete in text editors. For routine tasks like generating {roxygen2} documentation scaffolding for functions, I use the {chores} package, which requires a bunch of pointing and clicking to use.

Even though I use Positron, I purposely do not use either Positron Assistant or Databot. I have them disabled.

So in the end, for pedagogical reasons, I don’t foresee me incorporating LLMs into this class. I’m pedagogically opposed to it. I’m facing all sorts of external pressure to do it, but I’m resisting.

You’ve got to learn first.

Robert Finger @robertfinger.bsky.social · 9mo ago

New paper in Nature Communications🥳 Our paper ’Expected effects of a global transformation of agricultural pest management’ led by Niklas Möhring is now online Open Access www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Always cool to see these kinds of Wrapped-style summaries. I particularly like the Emoji overview as well 😀

Anisota@anisota.net · 9mo ago

Hello moths, The harvest has arrived: anisota.net/harvest It's like Spotify Wrapped, but for Bluesky and the ATmosphere. 🌾 See your most-used words, discover who you interact with most, explore your posting patterns, and find all sorts of fun insights.

Michael Ralph @michaelcralph.bsky.social · 10mo ago

I talk with my Research Methods students about publishing during the semester... and I was had a difficult time explaining why I personally avoid Frontiers similar to MDPI. I will have less difficulty this coming year. From: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Experience Wageningen University & Research from anywhere in the world! Join our Virtual Open Day to watch programme presentations, chat live with students and advisers, and get an inside look at real student life in Wageningen. 📅 4 December 2025 🌍 15:00 - 21:00 CET 💻online