Former ERAE editor C.J.P. (Kees) Burger, died on September 7th, 2016 at the age of 65. He just retired in April 2016 as associate professor of the Development Economics Group at Wageningen University. Kees received the diagnoses of incurable pancreas cancer more than two years ago but partly due to a strong chemo he bought precious extra time. Unfortunately in 2016 his health deteriorated. Kees remained active till the last moment both professionally and socially; he even made a visit with his family to Sri Lanka, where he had worked earlier.
Kees Burger was appointed as editor of the ERAE at an ERAE Board meeting in Leuven, spring 1980, at that time he was 29 years old. Jan de Veer, one of the founding fathers of the ERAE and the first editor, who did 7 volumes of the ERAE, had observed his ‘natural’ skills as reviewer of papers submitted to and attracted by the Review. He went deeply into the methodology and content of papers, but kept also an eye on their relevance and presentation. With his excellent language skills he could also communicate easily. However, by himself Kees had not yet published one paper in an international scientific journal.
Kees was the editor of a total of 9 volumes published between 1981 and 1989. He regularly reported to the EAAE in their 3-annual congress, visited several EAAE-seminars and developed a large network within and outside the European Association. The regional editors of the ERAE played an important role in developing this network. When he switched workplace in 1983 (from the Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI) in The Hague to the Economic and Social Institute (ESI) in Amsterdam) he took the ERAE with him. Because of his new working environment he connected himself also to the International Association of Agricultural Economists and visited their congresses as well. In this way he prepared also his switch to development economics (an old times favourite subject) and later to Wageningen University. Still his strong methodological, analytical, editing abilities, but above all his open and supporting approach had been developed during his period as editor of the ERAE.
Our thoughts are with his wife (Wijnie van Eck) and their three children (Joris, Annemarie and Maarten).
14 September 2016, Arie Oskam and Jack Peerlings