Source: PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY submitted to NRP
NORTHEAST REGIONAL CENTER FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT-NERCRD-FY2023
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1031451
Grant No.
2023-51150-41113
Cumulative Award Amt.
$704,232.00
Proposal No.
2023-07599
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2023
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2026
Grant Year
2023
Program Code
[UU.R]- Rural Development Centers
Recipient Organization
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
408 Old Main
UNIVERSITY PARK,PA 16802-1505
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD), based at Penn State University, seeks to enhance the capacity of Land Grant Universities (LGUs) to foster regional prosperity and rural development. We accomplish this by conducting impactful research and forging partnerships with federal and private funding agencies and stakeholder organizations, and connecting them with the LGU system. We also serve as a regional resource hub linking research faculty and Extension professionals across state lines. Rural areas continue to face pressing problems that include economic and demographic change, economic disruption, climate variability, risk and uncertainty about the future, as well as ongoing challenges in recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.This proposal builds on the Center's prior work in addition to incorporating priorities identified by the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and approved by the Board of Directors (BOD) at the October 27, 2022 annual meeting held in Newport, Rhode Island. The TAC recommendations were based on current Center activities, results of the NIFA-commissioned Northeast Listening Sessions Report (Entsminger et al., 2023) as well as the TAC members' knowledge of the region. A goal of the TAC at this year's meeting was to "provide broad guidance on priorities without micromanaging," and to help the Center to choose important activities that are also feasible given resources available (TAC 2022, p. 2); importantly, the TAC also considered which activities, if any, the Center should consider sunsetting. The proposal furthermore aligns with strategic priorities of the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, it reflects the forthcoming "Northeast Agenda" prepared by the Northeast Research Association (NERA, 2023), and it draws on findings from the climate change-related "Ecosystems Study" commissioned by the Northeast Extension Directors (NEED) and NERA, to which the Center also contributed. By way of summary, three broad priority areas were approved by the BOD following the TAC's recommendations: 1. Economic development, resilience and innovation; 2. Food systems, nutrition security and agriculture; and 3. Capacity building and facilitation. Four key cross-cutting themes also were identified: 1. The Rural/Urban interface; 2. Infrastructure development; 3. Climate change; and 4. Diversity, equity, inclusion and access (DEIA). These cross-cutting issues naturally intersect with the three broad priority areas identified above. In particular, both tensions (conflict) and opportunities across the urban/rural interface are arguably more pronounced in the NE than in any of the other regions, even as densely settled urban agglomerations co-exist near rural amenities that offer numerous opportunities for recreation. The infrastructure theme likewise cuts across development, food systems and Extension delivery capacity, starting with access to knowledge but extending to cloud computing for innovation and exports as well as both selling and procuring goods and services. Climate change likewise cuts across these issues. Indeed, one of the recommendations from the national listening sessions report is to "integrate[d] climate-related education into all Extension program areas" (Entsminger et al., 2023, p.27). Last, diversity, equity, inclusion and access issues include availability of credit to start a new business, access to tourism opportunities, and quality diets as they depend on income and local availability of healthy food.Engagement and Representation: The Center's BOD and TAC both include members from 1890 institutions and one of our goals is to maintain membership levels in proportion to the region's stakeholder distribution. This year our TAC chair has established a committee to review the Center's DEIA activities (please see below). Under the leadership of TAC Chair Heather Stephens (WVU), the TAC has also changed the structure of its quarterly meetings to allow for more targeted engagement with the Center; as a recent example, the TAC developed interview questions to be asked of candidates for NERCRD's Associate Director position. We also plan to participate in the UMES Agritourism conference, at the invitation of our BOD chair, Dr. Moses Kairo. We will continue to seek such opportunities over the course of the project.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
6086050301080%
6086050308020%
Knowledge Area
608 - Community Resource Planning and Development;

Subject Of Investigation
6050 - Communities, areas, and regions;

Field Of Science
3010 - Economics; 3080 - Sociology;
Goals / Objectives
Economic development, resilience, and innovationDrawing from the regional priorities identified via the USDA NIFA-funded Listening Sessions held in 2022 and building on earlier work in rural innovation, we will pursue several lines of inquiry related to economic resilience and innovation, with an emphasis on identifying pathways for rural recovery from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also propose to partner with the NCRCRD in a Qualtrics survey effort targeted at caregiving activities in the region, which has come up repeatedly as a constraint to workforce participation.Objectives: (a) translate for Extension and other audiences research findings from the Center's previous peer-reviewed research including the forthcoming research from the separately funded rural innovation research project, which was completed in late April 2023. (b) conduct additional research on related topics such as workforce development and training, in the context of developing domestic supply chains for renewable energy (solar, wind); factors underlying the resilience and recovery of the tourism and recreation-based economies (building on Han et al., 2022 in Tourism Economics); differences in entrepreneurship and small business formation across racial and gender lines, as mediated by factors such as access to credit or to eldercare and childcare, among others (in collaboration with the Economic Research Service and West Virginia University); how to build climate-resilient rural economies and agricultural systems, considering the impacts both of climate and the transition to a more climate-friendly energy system, and the role of infrastructure in this general context.Need/Gap: As summarized in Entsminger et al. (2023), the listening session participants in the region emphasized infrastructure as a top priority (especially broadband services, diversification of energy production and transmission, and pressures on housing availability and affordability). Participants also emphasized workforce training and economic development, particularly entrepreneurship and small business creation and retention. Research in these areas that can be translated into Extension programming will help communities address these priorities.Food systems, nutrition security, and agricultureNERCRD has a long-running research and outreach program focusing on local and regional food systems (e.g., Cleary et al., 2019; Ge et al., 2022; Schmidt et al., 2023), and this line of inquiry has recently expanded into the related sub-topics of agritourism, direct sales, and consumer-supported agriculture. Most recently, we have collaborated on the separately funded research and outreach project on agritourism and agricultural clusters (led by Claudia Schmidt with partners at University of Vermont and Oklahoma State University). We are also expanding our research portfolio into ethnic differences in diet quality before and after Covid-19.Objectives: We will: a) conduct additional research and develop outreach materials on food systems-related topics, including examining the causal effect of broadband on agritourism growth along with increasing direct sales from farms to consumers; build on earlier research (e.g., Cleary et al., 2019) to understand population thresholds needed to support a given number of establishments and tourism-related trails, from Pennsylvania to other states within the region; examine the relationship between community economic conditions and population health, especially as it relates to food security including nutrition security, the healthy eating index, and inequality, especially during the covid pandemic, which was emphasized by the BOD and TAC; and use county-level data from the 2022 Agricultural Census (which will be available in 2024) to explore the changing contribution of the Northeast region not only to the nation's overall agricultural output but also to nutrition security. b) A potential new activity would be to gather information on the landscape of agriculture and agricultural products (e.g., by accessing and assessing existing research) in the Northeast and to work with NERA and NEED leadership to communicate about the needs of research and Extension beyond production agriculture.Need/Gap: Despite growing interest in the topic, a void remains in the literature on the conditions under which agritourism related businesses can thrive and contribute to local economies. Likewise, the literature on food consumption equity (both quality and quantity) remains relatively sparse. And with ongoing climate change, there is growing interest in agricultural production possibilities as well as shifting production belts across the U.S. states.Capacity building and facilitationThe NERCRD has a long history of connecting LGU faculty and educators across state lines and exploring avenues for synergies between programs. In this context, the Center proposes to implement two new broad sets of recommendations, reflected in objectives a) and b) below.Objectives: a) phase out administrative support of the National Extension Tourism network while supporting their transition towards greater self-governance; b) support a TAC-led NERCRD Task Force to assess the Center's activities and propose recommendations for the how it will incorporate DEIA into its efforts and priorities, that is, how it can address diversity issues while also being more inclusive; c) as opportunities arise, continue to amplify and implement the results of the listening sessions, as we have done, for example, in a joint national webinar with the Council on Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics (C-FARE) and a Federal Reserve Bank partner; d) continue to identify and amplify promising Extension programs from around the region as well as the nation that can be shared with our stakeholders from the different Northeast states and to facilitate the convening of regional stakeholders around key topic areas (e.g., housing; climate-smart agriculture (such as a program offered at UMES); digital equity); e) support the emerging community development competencies program, in collaboration with our national partners; f) facilitate collaborations across the Cooperative Extension System to support and help implement the USDA Interagency Outdoor Recreation Economy MOU; and g) continue using and improving upon our communications platforms to help regional stakeholders stay abreast of relevant issues, opportunities, and resources.Need/Gap: As summarized by Entsminger et al. (2023), the Listening Session participants repeatedly emphasized the need for activities that convene, foster networks, and build collaboration among community development professionals/organizations and that generally improve the capacity of community development professionals at the institutional and community levels.
Project Methods
Objective 1. Economic development, resilience, and innovationStrategies/Actions: Our research team, comprising the Director, a Faculty Affiliate, an Assistant Research Professor, a Postdoctoral Scholar, and one PhD candidate, meets weekly to coordinate research activities and dissemination of results through papers, presentations, fact sheets, press releases, etc. We expect to add an Associate Director to the staff during this project's timeline, who will lead the translation of research findings into materials for Extension audiences.Objective 2. Food systems, nutrition security, and agricultureStrategies/Actions: As noted, our research team meets weekly to coordinate research activities and dissemination of results. Relatedly, we will participate in the upcoming workshop at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) on implementing and expanding agritourism activities as a source of local economic development (NERCRD Affiliate Dr. Claudia Schmidt at our suggestion has been invited to deliver a keynote address, as has Dr. Lisa Chase from UVM).Objective 3. Capacity building and facilitation.Strategies/Actions: As we continue our quest to fill the vacant Associate Director position, Penn State Extension Educator Peter Wulfhorst is helping us by leading these capacity-building efforts, for example by convening a Northeast Digital Equity Summit (scheduled for September 2023) and by evaluating Extension programs from outside the region for adoption within the region. We will continue to work with TAC member David Kay of Cornell both in his role of incoming Chair of the National Extension Climate Initiative (NECI) and with the Braver Angels program. More generally, we will support the Community Development Competencies curriculum currently being discussed in the region under the leadership of Charlie French (NH) and Mary Peabody (VT) and also continue to promote the Community Economic Impact Indicators work building on the seminal "Impact Indicators" publication commissioned by the Center and written by George Morse, Charlie French, and Scott Chazdon, and recently heralded by Chazdon on a national webinar, underscoring the longevity and impact of a prior Center investment. See: https://aese.psu.edu/nercrd/impacts

Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience: Target audience includes Deans and Directors of the land grant universities in the Northeast, professionals at USDA and within NIFA, faculty and educators across the region, policy makers, planners, citizens, and other audiences, depending on the topic. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We engage several postdocs, graduate students, and early career researchers in our research projects, who are exposed to new ideas, methods, research resources, and colleagues across the nation. The presentations and papers authored by NERCRD researchers and webinars organized by NERCRD staff have provided learning opportunities to countless audience members and readers across multiple disciplines. Stephen Alessi, who joined the NERCRD as Associate Director, is gaining new experience in this capacity, and we support his travel to capacity-building events including NACDEP and the upcoming Maryland Digital Equity Summit. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We presented research findings from several efforts at numerous conferences, including the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association, American Economics Association, North American Regional Science Council, Southern Regional Science Association, and the Travel and Tourism Research Association. As described under Objective 3G, we issued several newsletters and "events and opportunities" emails, shared dozens of social media posts, and wrote and distributed press releases. The annual report, which serves as a comprehensive accounting of all activities, is shared widely via mail, email, and in-person events. Our new website, launched in February 2024, provides a much easier platform to explore our research findings. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to continue translating key findings from the separately funded projects into general-audience-friendly formats, e.g., fact sheets. We also will continue to leverage our access to the Penn State-based Federal Data Center to conduct further research in the rural innovation topic area, as well as credit access and greenhouse gas emission, via our separately funded projects on decarbonization and rural innovation. We will write up findings from several research efforts currently underway and submit them to peer-reviewed journals. We will continue to support the National Extension Outdoor Recreation Working Group as they wind down their NTAE-funded project looking at areas of greatest opportunity to implement the MOU. We will share research findings at upcoming conferences, in our newsletter, and via our digital platforms. We will work with the Northeast DEIJ facilitation team to hold a training/workshop to further embed DEIJ principles in NE Extension programming. The NERCRD will assist Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture with analyzing results on their upcoming farmer transition survey. This can help the NERCRD gain a better understanding of the impact farmer transitions have on rural communities and the rural economy. We are also developing a new series of publications, "NERCRD Digest," which will distill key findings and impacts from various research efforts into a single-page document for use at in-person forums. We will build on the work examining the effects of the Community Reinvestment Act on employment during the next reporting period.We are seeking to work with NECI (David Kaye) to identify research and extension materials available on the topic of green energy. Our new grant on decarbonization across firms and regions supports this objective, as does our ongoing analysis of 2022 Ag Census data related to green energy adoption.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? 1A. NERCRD partnered with the NCRCRD to deploy a survey focused on the caregiving experiences of households in the Northeast U.S. It received 4,480 responses from all 13 NE.NERCRD provided financial support to Florence Becot, Penn State, and her graduate researcher Emily Southard, to analyze the survey data and to distill key findings into a research brief, which sheds light on how caregiving intersects with community and economic development in the Northeast region. This brief was published in July 2024, in collaboration with the NCRCRD. NERCRD researchers also continued to write up results from the separately funded USDA NIFA project on rural innovation, which closed 4/2023, resulting in two new papers showing that cloud computing and innovation activities are both associated with greater export propensity. 1B. Our initial work explores the 2022 Census of Agriculture (CoA) to examine at the state level where different kinds of green energy production are and are not thriving. We will present this at the NARSC meeting in New Orleans in November 2024. We will examine wage data for occupational classes involved in installation of such facilities. We are also considering this aspect in the context of our study about renewable energy generation on farms from the CoA, and how this may be affecting reductions in adoption. The first paper, "Economic, Social, and Environmental Drivers of Resilience and Recovery of U.S. Counties during the COVID-19 Pandemic," now under revision at Review of Regional Studies, analyzes leisure and hospitality resilience in US counties during the COVID-19 pandemic. It identifies key economic, social, and environmental factors affecting resilience and recovery, including pollution, crime, social capital, and natural amenities. The findings are crucial for developing policies to create a more resilient and sustainable post-pandemic tourism industry. In our second paper, we address the scarcity of sub-national tourism performance indices in the United States, contrasting with the abundance of such measures in Europe. We utilize county-level data from diverse sources to construct comprehensive indices. This work was presented by colleagues at the TTRA conference in Burlington, generating considerable interest and discussion. We collaborated with James Davis and Anil Rupasingha of USDA ERS to examine the impact of loans to women and minority business owners from the USDA Rural Business-Cooperative Service (RBCS) program. The RBCS program aims to support rural entrepreneurs with funding, training, and expertise to launch and expand ventures, as well as access employment opportunities in agriculture. Initial work includes (1) starting a new research project within the Penn State Research Data Center (RDC), (2) importing the transaction-level RBCS data from ERS to Penn State RDC, and (3) matching the businesses in the RBCS data set with those in Census Bureau's establishment-level data sets, such as the County Business Patterns Business Register and the Longitudinal Business Database. We also investigated whether the effects varied between metro and nonmetro areas. According to the statistically significant findings, the CRA designation increased residence-based employment in CRA-designated tracts, including job growth for female and minority groups. We observed that these effects were higher in tracts located in non-metropolitan areas compared to metro areas. 2Aa. This work is underway and results will be presented at the FDRS conference in Puerto Rico in October 2024. Goetz, Stephan J., Zheng Tian, Claudia Schmidt, and Yuxuan Pan. 2024. "Alcoholic Beverage Manufacturing Resilience during The Great Recession and the Covid-19 Pandemic." Parts of this work were described at a USDA-sponsored roundtable on rural investments held in Erie, PA, which was attended by the Deputy Secretary of Ag. and the Pennsylvania Secretary of Ag. 2Ab. We estimated the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on the healthfulness of food purchases of different racial groups with multi-year weekly-level household scanner data. We found that, in the first two months of COVID-19, the black-white gap in diet quality shrank by 50% of the pre-COVID black-white gap. In contrast, the white-Hispanic gap widened in June 2020. These differences are largely due to demographics, income, and education. 2Ac. Work exploring the changing contribution of Northeast agriculture is ongoing using the 2022 CoA data. Initial findings were presented at a Baltimore, MD, conference sponsored by the University of Md. Eastern Shore. S. Goetz, Y. Pan, Z. Tian and C. Schmidt, "The 2022 Census of Agriculture: Updates and emerging trends for the Northeast U.S.", NAPA 4th Biennial International Scientific Conference May 24-26, 2024, Baltimore, MD. 3A. NERCRD collaborated with the NET leadership to ensure a smooth transition toward decreased administrative support. At this point, the organization has put into place several measures to ensure their organizational stability, and NERCRD provides limited communications support. 3B. At its January 2024 quarterly meeting, the TAC discussed a proposal received by NEED to support expansion of a regional DEIJ training program (described in detail at: https://bit.ly/3z0uhJE). The TAC agreed that further exploration was warranted, and to that end, NERCRD staff met with the team of facilitators in January and again in April to discuss further. Now that the Associate Director position has been fille, plans for a Fall 2024 workshop underway. 3C. The Listening Sessions (LS) reports were shared at the 2024 NACDEP conference in Houston, TX, in June. The team that carried out the LS under the leadership of former NERCRD Associate Director Entsminger was honored with the NACDEP Regional Runner Up for the Excellence in Teamwork Award. 3D. Associate Director Stephen Alessi, who joined NERCRD in June 2024, has identified promising Extension programs on (1) using an Extension-developed broadband mapping tool to help communities plan their broadband-expansion projects; and (2) addressing the housing crisis in rural communities. These webinars are planned for Sept. and Nov. 2024, respectively. Alessi has also assisted with reinvigorating the partnership with UMD Extension that emerged from the 2023 Digital Equity Summit, collaborating on a NERCRD-published report from the Summit and participating as a panelist on a Maryland Digital Equity Summit taking place in October 2024. 3E. Nothing to report at this time. 3F. NERCRD communications specialist Kristen Devlin has facilitated monthly meetings of the National Extension Outdoor Recreation Working Group (NEORWG) Steering Committee since mid-2023, and supported the NTAE-funded effort led by Doug Arbogast (WVU) to identify the areas of greatest potential for implementing the MOU. NERCRD is also hosting a meeting between the NEORWG group and members of the RD Data team to share information on data resources that may be helpful in planning outdoor recreation projects. NERCRD Director Stephan Goetz continues to contribute to two complementary and separately funded projects led by Arbogast examining sustainable tourism development indicators. 3G. The NERCRD launched its new website in February 2024, providing an improved user experience, and allows NERCRD to share its resources more easily. We shared information and resources through eight mailings to email subscribers and dozens of social media posts, which contained updates on research, resources, webinars, conferences, and other opportunities related to community and economic development. We also attended several conferences to engage with stakeholders and share research findings (see "Products").

Publications

  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Devlin, Kristen. 2024. High-Speed Internet Linked to More Farms Offering Agritourism, June 25, 2024. https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/high-speed-internet-linked-more-farms-offering-agritourism/.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Kristen Devlin. 2024. US Companies Global Market Reach Linked to Cloud Computing Use. Penn State News, August 12, 2024. https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/us-companies-global-market-reach-linked-cloud-computing-use/.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: NERCRD. 2023. Events, Opportunities, and Resources, November 2023 Edition, November 20, 2023. https://mailchi.mp/8ce9b2de443e/events-and-opportunities-nov23-6679846.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: NERCRD. 2023. Events, Opportunities, and Resources, October 2023 Edition, October 9, 2023. https://mailchi.mp/c0386ad6f290/events-and-opportunities-oct-2023.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: NERCRD. 2023. NERCRD Newsletter, December 2023 Edition, December 14, 2023. https://mailchi.mp/c6b4a18b339f/nercrd-news-december-2023-6684314.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: NERCRD. 2024. Events, Opportunities, and Resources, March 2024 Edition, March 5, 2024. https://mailchi.mp/021e2bcf59c0/nercrd-news-march-2024-6718502.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: NERCRD. 2024. NERCRD Newsletter, April 2024 Edition, April 29, 2024. https://mailchi.mp/7cb4ec5e2820/nercrd-news-april-2024-6725737.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: NERCRD. 2024. NERCRD Newsletter, August 2024 Edition, August 22, 2024. https://mailchi.mp/bc77633df402/nercrd-news-august-2024-6742961.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: NERCRD. 2024. NERCRD Newsletter, February 2024 Edition, February 7, 2024. https://mailchi.mp/fd6de8deffee/nercrd-news-feb-2024-6687942.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: NERCRD. 2024. NERCRD Newsletter, June 2024 Edition, June 6, 2024. https://mailchi.mp/76c122ff6db1/nercrd-news-june-2024-6741926.