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) at Penn State University, seeks to enhance the capacity of Land Grant Universities (LGUs) to foster regional prosperity and rural development. We accomplish this through research and partnerships with federal and private funding agencies and stakeholder organizations and connecting them with the LGU system. NERCRD also serves as a regional hub linking research faculty and Extension professionals across state lines. Rural areas continue to face population and farm loss, as well as economic and demographic change and lingering disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic.This proposal builds on the Center's previous portfolio of work and reflects emerging priorities identified by the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and approved by the Board of Directors (BOD) during the 2023 virtual annual meeting. In addition, the proposal incorporates USDA-NIFA goals and outreach efforts that will be facilitated by the newly filled position of Associate Director. The TAC reiterated the importance of the Associate Director position in its deliberations and recommendations to the BOD. The report also reflects results of the NIFA-commissioned Northeast Listening Sessions Report (Entsminger et al., 2023), the importance of which was reaffirmed by the TAC and which inform the regional community development cohort meetings convened by the Executive Director of the Northeast Extension Directors. The TAC pointed out (TAC 2023, slide 9) that "more needs to be done to celebrate and extend the impacts of the Center's work in the region." Importantly, the TAC advised that the Center consider its 1. Capacity Building and Facilitation priority area as tactical, and the other two areas, 2. Economic Development, Resilience and Innovation, and 3. Food Systems, Nutrition Security and Agriculture as being strategic. The proposal reflects the "Northeast Agenda" prepared by the Northeast Research Association (NERA, 2023). Cross-cutting themes also continue to be important for the Northeast, including the rural/urban interface and infrastructure development. These cross-cutting issues naturally intersect with the three broad priority areas identified above. 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 in support of innovation and exports as well as both selling and procuring goods and services. Climate related topics arise in all of 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). The TAC recommended the Center focus on NE specific initiatives as it chooses new opportunities, or coordinates on national initiatives with the other RRDCs (for example in the surveys involving caregiving).Engagement and Representation: The Center's BOD and TAC both include members from 1890 institutions, and we seek to maintain membership levels in proportion to the region's stakeholder distribution. We continue to focus on questions of rural access, including to healthcare, financial capital, educational materials and broadband. Under the leadership of TAC Chair Heather Stephens (WVU), the TAC has changed its quarterly meetings to allow for more targeted engagement with the Center. We also plan to engage the region's three 1890 institutions more closely in specific projects, including in addressing farm growth and decline.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
100%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
1. Capacity building and facilitation.We propose to continue to build on the Center's long history of connecting LGU faculty and educators across state lines and exploring avenues for synergies between programs. The newly added Associate Director will help to amplify and accelerate our work in this area, including in the impact indicators and the new community development competencies projects.Objectives:(1a) Identify, amplify, and develop promising Extension programs that focus on priority areas for the region set by NIFA, BOD, and TAC, including but not limited to programs that focus on the causes of rural depopulation and how to support and enhance community viability, economic growth, and economic and community development in rural areas more generally.(1b) Facilitate collaborations across the Cooperative Extension System, both to support and help implement the USDA Interagency Outdoor Recreation Economy MOU and to more generally create and support knowledge-sharing networks that cross state lines.(1c) Continue using and improving upon our communications platforms to help regional stakeholders stay abreast of relevant issues, opportunities, and resources; launch new initiatives to demonstrate and celebrate the Center's research and outreach impacts and successes.Need/Gap: As noted in 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 in our region. At its 2023 annual meeting, the TAC recommended NERCRD explore ways to more widely share its impacts and successes.2. Economic development, resilience, and innovationPopulation loss from many rural counties continues to be a national concern, and the rural Northeast is not an exception. In Pennsylvania, for example, most of the rural counties are forecast to lose population between 2020 and 2050 according to Center for Rural PA estimates that consider net births, net migration and commuting data (Wright, 2024). In some counties, the loss is over 20%. Housing affordability is integrally related to local economic conditions, with vacant homes and associated blight a growing problem in declining communities and high costs a concern in growing counties. Here we propose to document the different patterns across the U.S. and seek solutions for achieving a better balance, by drawing on existing research and outreach programs (e.g., New Hampshire's Housing Academy) and making it appropriate to the NE region. We will continue to draw from the regional priorities identified via the USDA NIFA-funded Listening Sessions held in 2022 and extend our earlier work on rural innovation, in identifying pathways for continued rural recovery from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will include child and elder caregiving activities in the region, which often constrain workforce participation (e.g., Wright 2024).Objectives:(2a) Translate for Extension and other audiences research findings from the Center's previous and on-going peer-reviewed research including the rural innovation research project, and collaborate on studies with the USDA's Economic Research Service and West Virginia University on the barriers and constraints facing small businesses seeking to expand;(2b) conduct research on related topics such as renewable energy (solar, wind) adoption on farms; county level indicators on social, economic and environmental dimensions of tourism sustainability; and(2c) develop general models that can be custom-tailored to rural communities at different levels of development, ranging from very low intensity to overtourism.Need/Gap: As rural areas continue to face staggering population loss that threaten that long term survival, a critical need exists both for new descriptive and causal studies on current conditions and trends, as well as outreach materials that draw on existing research. This needs cuts across economic sectors and different types of communities across the rural-urban continuum.3. Food systems, nutrition security, and agricultureThe long-term decline in farm numbers continues to figure prominently as a national concern. For the first time since the 1930s, the number of farms has dropped to below 1.89 million. The continuing importance of the issue is evident from the fact that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was called to testify before Congress early in 2024 about declining farm numbers. With a majority (58%) of producers nationally stating that their primary occupation is not in farming, the importance of rural development, livability and employment opportunities has never been greater. At the same time, alternative sources of farm income such as agritourism, direct sales to consumers, and green energy production have become more important. NERCRD 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 related sub-topics of agritourism, direct sales, and consumer-supported agriculture. This year we will continue to build on our award-winning research on food security related to Community Food Services by also examining reasons for food price inflation and how households have been affected as revealed in the Household Pulse Survey (Tian et al. 2022). We will continue to support the agritourism and agricultural clusters project (led by C. Schmidt with partners at Univ. of Vermont and Oklahoma State Univ.). Our previous research continues to produce outputs, for example, Hira et al. 2024.Objectives: (3a) We will conduct additional research and develop outreach materials on agricultural development in the region drawing on the rich datasets available in the newly released 2022 Census of Agriculture. We will build on earlier research (e.g., Cleary et al., 2019) to understand the resiliency of the alcoholic beverage manufacturing sector and population thresholds needed to support a given number of establishments using Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data (now available through 2023); explore the changing contribution of the Northeast region not only to the nation's overall agricultural output but also to nutrition security.(3b) We will explore the interdependence between the agricultural economy and small local business ownership, as drivers of local economic growth; there are also connections here to agritourism development and recreational economies, with the latter having important links to population physical and mental health.(3c) We will work with NERA and NEED leadership to communicate about the needs of research and Extension beyond production agriculture.Need/Gap: With continually changing economic conditions affecting food systems, as well as new opportunities with evolving global trading relationships, an important need exists to track the state and needs of the agricultural economy of different states and counties, which is possible thanks to the new 2022 Agricultural Census data. A void also remains in the literature on the conditions under which farming and agritourism related businesses can thrive and contribute to local economies. And with ongoing climate change concerns, there is interest in new agricultural production possibilities as well as on-farm green energy production across the U.S. states.
Project Methods
Objective 1. Capacity building and facilitation strategies/actionsObj.1a: Create resources that can be used by small and new businesses to help them grow and establish themselves; study the impact green and renewable energy on rural communities; reengage with Digital Equity Summit leaders to establish course of action; study issues associated with weather events, such as stormwater management, environmental impacts, etc.Obj. 1b: Develop communications materials and execute a strategy for engaging with other land-grant universities and regional partners to identify opportunities for collaborations. Develop travel plans to meet with all Extension services in the region, and timeline to complete this visit. Continue to interact with, learn from, and engage with NIFA,USDA, and other stakeholders.Obj. 1c: Develop routine communication pieces, make use of social media, website, webinars, and other engagement opportunities. Measure impacts and reach of NERCRD research using program/webinar registrations; integration into Extension programs; article views/website/social media engagement; economic impact studies.Objective 2. Economic development, resilience, and innovation strategies/actions: Our research team, comprising the Director, a new Associate Director, a Faculty Affiliate, two postdoctoral Scholars, and one PhD candidate, meets weekly to coordinate research activities and dissemination of results through papers, presentations, fact sheets, press releases, etc. With the growing importance of tourism and the recreational economy more generally as rural engines of growth, we also will implement the RD, FS and NIFA MOU in collaboration with Dr. Doug Arbogast (MOU 2023). We will study decarbonization and its impacts on rural communities in a separately funded project, with partners at NSF and ERS.Objective 3. Food systems, nutrition security, and agriculture strategies/actions: Our team will meet at least weekly to coordinate research activities and dissemination of results. Relatedly, we will participate in conferences and workshops as the opportunities arise, and sponsor or develop our own webinars to reach a wider audience.