Erin Love

Erin Love is an economist in RTI’s Center for Applied Economics and Strategy. She specializes in using data science techniques to understand food system dynamics. Her research interests include food systems as a mechanism for economic development, food policy, climate-smart agriculture, values-based food procurement, food security, food waste, and true cost accounting in agri-food supply chains. Her technical skills include database development, data wrangling and cleaning, data visualizations, agent-based modeling, econometrics (including time-series analysis), optimization modeling, supply chain mapping and margining, data dashboard development, hedonic price analysis, economic impact analysis, interview analysis, and survey design and analysis. 

Ms. Love has led and contributed to projects for a variety of clients, including USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, USDA Food Safety Inspection Service, USDA Economic Research Service, US Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, Rockefeller Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dogwood Health Trust, local councils of government, non-profit organizations, and multi-national food and beverage companies. Project highlights include contributing to the discrete choice experiment that was used to assess consumers’ willingness-to-pay for a “Product of USA” meat label and inform the development of a new final rule, modeling economic-environmental tradeoffs and statewide food system impacts of the City of New York’s values-based food procurement policies via the City Food Policy project, assessing Western North Carolina’s agricultural technology landscape, providing data to inform regional food systems-based economic development efforts in Central and Eastern North Carolina, and generating insights about the competitiveness and future strategy of Indiana’s agbioscience industry.

Before joining RTI, Ms. Love was a member of an interdisciplinary team at Colorado State University that built an agent-based model of the Colorado food system. She also led aquaculture-focused community and economic development efforts as a Fellow at the Island Institute and administered 36 federal Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program sites as Nutrition Manager of Meal Programs at the YMCA of Western North Carolina.