Goldberg grew up in North Dakota, the son of a grain farmer, who was interested in improving the quality of food. Although Goldberg's expected to go back to his family business after his graduation, his academic superiors encouraged him to stay and become an academic himself.

Agribusiness
Together with John Davis, Goldberg developed the term agribusiness. In agriculture “everybody has to make a living. I thought that in agriculture everybody’s input was somebody’s output.” With the term agribusiness they tried to coin a word that would encompass collaboration and cooperation. “I thought that agriculture and business talked about how we were going to feed the world, provide nutrition and economic development, and improve the environment.”

Agribusiness in Goldberg's vocabulary agribusiness is about creating shared value. It serves both the public interest and private interests. Food is not only about money exchange, it is also about political, ecological and economical questions. "They are all interrelated in agribusiness”, Goldberg says.

It’s not good enough to think of what we are doing as just a food related system
IFAMA
Goldberg is one of the three founders of IFAMA, which created together with professors Vernon Schneider and Gail Cramer. IFAMA was born out of the need to create a world wide organization that studies food ras a system that connects agriculture, ecology, health, economy and, of course, political and business decision making.

Goldberg’s message for IFAMA’s future is crystal clear, albeit a trifle critical. IFAMA needs to better integrate agriculture, health, ecology and economics. “I feel that just as we now have business leaders and other kinds of leaders in agribusiness management as well as agriculture economics. I think that we have to broaden our base to get the environmentalists involved, to get the scientists involved and to get the medical community involved in IFAMA. It’s not good enough to think of what we are doing as just a food related system. It’s a health related system. It’s a nutrition system. It’s an economic development system. And it’s an environmental system.”