Alan Barrett

Mr. Barrett is an accomplished economist with more than 25 years of experience in futures and cash markets with a focus on cotton, commodity projects, non-traditional agricultural products, transportation, and supply chain studies. He is currently the Director of Research and Consulting at Higby Barrett.  Mr. Barrett supervises the fundamental and technical economic analysis performed by the Higby Barrett team.  Alan also leads the consulting practice and is a principal investigator for projects focused on transportation, agricultural markets, and energy.

Mr. Barrett previously worked for Doane Advisory Services, starting their consulting group.  For Doane Advisory Services, Mr. Barrett oversaw the Consulting Department, wrote transportation articles for weekly reports, authored the International Report (long-term forecasts) twice a year, wrote blog entrees for United States Soybean Export Council (USSEC), and provided cotton advice.

Mr. Barrett has a Master of Science degree from the University of Tennessee.  His expertise encompasses feasibility studies of oilseed crushing plants (soybean canola, and cottonseed), grain elevators, export elevators, shuttle elevators, grain container operations, flourmills, and other processing facilities.  Mr. Barrett has conducted transportation supply chain studies for grains, oilseeds, fertilizer, coal, natural gas, crude oil, and petroleum products.  His commodity analysis work also includes studies of various fruit and vegetable markets and technologies impacting these markets.  In addition, Mr. Barrett has considerable experience in non-traditional agricultural products such as coal, coke, natural gas, chemicals, hydraulic fracturing fluid, hydraulic fracturing proppants, glycerin, fertilizer, micronutrients, salt, limestone, cement, iron ore, pig iron, and steel, especially feed ingredients.

Alan studied and traded the cotton market directly under Julien Hohenberg and Robin Cotton for six years.  Being a commodity futures broker for six years for Refco, Inc. gave Mr. Barrett a glimpse into the real-life elements of trading or factors that influence price movement that are not related to supply and demand.  Working with clients, Mr. Barrett saw firsthand the anxieties that comes with commodity trading.

For Informa Economics EIG, Mr. Barrett oversaw the transportation department, backed up the cotton analyst, and worked on a wide array of consulting projects.  Mr. Barrett published a weekly grain and oilseed bulk transportation report for North America.  Other publications include the annual Barge Fleet Profile, Barge Commodity Profile, Barge Industry Fact Book and Crude Oil Barge Situation.  He conducted three Transportation Roundtables held throughout North and Central America in locations that are critical to the transportation industry.  Mr. Barrett routinely presented at conferences about topics of interest in the transportation and commodity fields.