Faculty Directory
  • Adjunct Faculty

Jonathan Coppess

Titles

  • Adjunct Faculty

Biography

Jonathan Coppess currently serves as the Leonard and Lila Gardner-Illinois Farm Bureau Family of Companies Endowed Associate Professor of Agricultural Policy in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics. He is the author of two books on the legislative history and political development of farm policy, “The Fault Lines of Farm Policy,” (2018); and “Between Soil and Society,” (2024). He is also a member of the farmdoc project and a frequent contributor to farmdoc daily. He leads the Gardner Agricultural Policy Program and the Policy Design Lab. Jonathan previously served as chief counsel for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, as well as on a temporary, part-time basis as a special counsel. Prior to his service on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, Jonathan served as the administrator of the Farm Service Agency at USDA and legislative assistant to Senator Ben Nelson. Prior to his time in Washington, D.C., Jonathan was a litigation associate at Freeborn & Peters LLP in Chicago, Illinois. Jonathan grew up on his family’s farm in Western Ohio, earned his bachelor’s from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and his juris doctor from The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.

 

Expertise

  • Food Law and Policy

Departments

  • Summer Session

Courses Taught

  • Introduction to the Farm Bill