om Reardon is a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. Tom has been at MSU since 1992; IFPRI Research Fellow 1986-1991; Rockefeller Foundation Post-Doc with IFPRI in Burkina Faso 1984-1986; Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1984, and masters from the Université de Nice and Columbia University. Tom is also Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI since 2022.

Tom researches the transformation of food value chains: (1) the “supermarket revolution” and the "food service revolution" (2) the “Quiet Revolution” in the “Hidden Middle”, a term coined by him for SMEs in the midstream of value chains; (3) R&D and farm inputs supply chain transformation; (4) e-commerce and food delivery intermediaries. He studies the impacts of these transformations on food industry business strategies, on farms, consumption/nutrition, and employment. Tom also researches “Rural Nonfarm Employment” inside and outside of food systems.

Tom works mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and has stayed 21 years in those regions. His current field survey projects and primary data analysis are in Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania, and survey data analysis in Bangladesh, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, and Myanmar.

Tom is Fellow of Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and Honorary Life Member (equivalent of Fellow) of International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). He has nearly 44,000 citations in Google Scholar with an H index of 96 as of March 2023. He ranks in the top 1.6% of 67,000 economists globally tracked by IDEAS/REPEC. Tom is in Who’s Who in Economics; was featured on the front page of the New York Times; was the first agrifood economist invitee to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Tom teaches a graduate class on food systems organization (AFRE 841), a graduate class on agriculture in international development (AFRE 861), and an undergraduate class on international agrifood markets (AFRE 327) in fall semesters; he mentors doctoral and masters students (100 since 1992).