For more than 30 years, I’ve been combining history and economics to illuminate the “dismal science” and give ordinary people a “real world” explanation of what’s happening in the economies of countries, governments, businesses, and even their own households.

I started writing my Real World Economics column in 1999; today it appears in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Bismarck Tribune, and Idaho Statesman. I speak to corporations, business associations, and civic organizations across the country at their annual meetings and other gatherings. I also advise in a variety of areas related to economics, agriculture, Latin America, and developing countries. Learn more about my consulting services.

With degrees in Latin American studies and agricultural economics, it’s been my privilege to teach thousands of students at many of the higher education institutions in the Twin Cities. For most of the 1990s, I was the regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, where my chief responsibility was writing the Ninth District’s portion of the infamous Beige Book.

Ed working our land along Chanarambie Creek.

My view of the world, its governments, its people, and its cultures is enriched by having lived, worked, and consulted in Brazil, Peru, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Barbados. I am fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. I am a retired major in the U.S. Army Reserves and served in Vietnam.

Born in Michigan, I was raised on a southwest Minnesota farm that I still own. While the crop and pasture land are rented to local farmers, I continue to improve the areas around Chanarambie Creek by planting trees and in other ways. Our Lotterman farm is adjacent to the one owned by my Dutch immigrant grandparents, Cornelius and Marie Antoinette Rylaarsdam. More than 100 years later, that farm is in the hands of my cousins, third- and fourth-generation “Rylies.”