Michael Swanson

Michael Swanson is an agricultural economist and consultant for Wells Fargo, the largest commercial agricultural lender in the United States. Based in Minneapolis, his responsibilities include analyzing the impact of energy on agriculture, forecasting for key agricultural commodities, such as wheat, soybeans, corn, and cotton, and livestock sectors, such as cattle, dairy, and hogs. Additionally, he helps develop credit and risk strategies for Wells Fargo’s customers, and performs macroeconomic and international analysis on agricultural production and agribusiness.

Michael joined Wells Fargo in 2000 as a senior economist.

Prior to working at Wells Fargo, he worked for four years at Land O’ Lakes, a large national dairy cooperative based in Minnesota. There, he supervised a portion of the supply chain for dairy products including scheduling the production, warehousing, and distribution of more than 400 million pounds of cheese annually and also supervised the sales forecasting process.

Before working in the dairy processing business, Michael lived in South America for four years working for Cargill Cafetera de Manizales S.A., the Colombian subsidiary of the agribusiness giant Cargill. His areas of responsibilities included grain imports and value-added sales to feed producers and flour millers.

Michael started his career as a transportation analyst with Burlington Northern Railway from 1986 until 1989. His primary responsibilities included system analysis and capacity studies in the northern region stretching from Chicago to Seattle.

Michael received undergraduate degrees in economics and business administration from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., and both his master’s and doctorate degrees in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Minnesota. His doctoral thesis, which the National Research Institute and the Norwegian government sponsored, showed how to use value-added tax data to better estimate key components of economic activity.