Progress 09/01/11 to 08/31/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development was able to continue to support integrated research and extension activities to enhance the social and economic well-being of farmers, rural people and their communities in the Northeast. The Center staff contributed to research on rural development and food policy issues for decision makers in the Northeast and nationally. The Center Director was invited by the Northeast Research Association and the Northeast Extension Directors to make presentations in Beltsville, MD on assembling multi-disciplinary teams on integrated invasive species research and on local and regional food systems development. The Center also was able to build on and further strengthen its collaborative networks, and it was instrumental in developing and submitting three new multi-institutional competitive grant applications. Through these networks the Center was able to encourage a level of cooperation and collaboration among diverse grant recipients that is unprecedented. These grants all address the issue of better connecting farmers and consumers of food within cities, and in the process achieving agricultural and rural economic development objectives. The Center has also been approached by private foundations interested in food systems development. The Center was represented at the Conference on Regional Aspects of Marcellus Shale Development that was jointly hosted by Bucknell University and The Southern Regional Science Association and brought together experts from around the nation. Former Center staff was instrumental in expanding the Foundations of Practice in community development from the regional to the national levels. The Center also collaborated with its newly formed Technical Advisory Committee on the programmatic goals, strategies and activities for the NERCRD, and on identifying emerging priority issues in the Northeast region. The Northeast Center seeks to help local governments and rural communities address the social and economic problems they face by disseminating research-based information, facilitating community discourse, and building human capital and capacity within communities through formal teaching and educational programs. This project encourages and facilitates multi-state collaboration on strategic issues throughout the region, thereby making existing activities more effective and avoiding duplication of effort. PARTICIPANTS: Project participants included extension educators and faculty from around the Northeast Region and beyond. These individuals work both in the land grant system and in urban private universities. In addition, faculty and educators interested in the subject of invasive species attended one of the presentations. TARGET AUDIENCES: Target audiences include Deans and Directors, faculty, educators and practitioners in rural counties. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
The results of Center-sponsored peer-reviewed research have been used widely by practitioners, including the National Association of Development Organizations. In addition, there is robust evidence to suggest that Center stakeholders throughout the Northeast region are becoming more aware of the importance of this analytical tool, and changing their behaviors by adopting it and reconsidering their own work in light of the insights that the tool provides. One conference attendee remarked that he was glad he had attended, because the presentations were helping him to see more clearly the connections with economic and community development, on the one hand, and agricultural entrepreneurship, on the other. The Center director was invited to make presentations at four different regional conferences associated with the Northeast Research Association and the Northeast Extension Directors' Association, involving a total of 300 direct participants. The NERCRD developed outreach materials on best practices in entrepreneurship that were distributed to stakeholders, decision makers and government officials across the Northeast region and the U.S. Networks and working groups were formed to collaborate on pressing issues in the region, primarily related to local foods/food security and entrepreneurship. New partnerships were formed to address clusters and sustainability, as well as economic development, broadband, local foods and energy. Invitations to two different conferences sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank system, and attended by over 100 individuals each, are further evidence of the relevance and impact of the Center's work. Over 800 Center stakeholders received the Network newsletter each quarter along with occasional informational items. The Center has target audiences in each of the 13 Northeast states, as well as nationally. It serves directly the needs in the area of rural development of land grant university deans and directors.
Publications
- Liang, K. and S. J. Goetz, editors. 2011. Proceedings of the What Works! 2011 Conference: Entrepreneurship and Community Development in the Northeast. Conference Proceedings, April 2012. http://nercrd.psu.edu/Publications/rdppapers/rdp52.pdf
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Progress 09/01/10 to 08/31/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development continued to leverage and document the impact of the Center's work in the area of community capacity building, and to extend the knowledge acquired in these efforts to colleagues and collaborators within the region. The Center focused its resources on three key subject matter areas: entrepreneurship and job creation, including within the green economy; local and regional foods production systems, including their relationships to childhood obesity, food safety and capacity to feed the region and world; and land use and balanced use of natural resources. The NERCRD project focused on regional issues that also have a national impact. What Works! 2011: The Future of Rural Entrepreneurship and Community Development brought together practitioners, researchers, educators, and decision-makers to address critical issues in promoting entrepreneurship in the U.S. The workshop provided opportunities for Extension educators and other service providers to learn about new strategies and programs that work in different communities to stimulate job creation and business formation, for researchers to share science-based analyses that could be further developed into programs that will enhance economic development, and for town managers and local planners to share their experiences given new budget constraints and to learn about new research and outreach projects related to entrepreneurship and business development. A pre-conference Community and Economic Development Meeting was held in response to a discussion by Northeast NACDEP members at the 2011 NACDEP Conference. The group agreed that more regular opportunities to collaborate were needed. A post-conference meeting was held so that the leadership team for the eXtension Community of Practice (CoP) could develop content to expand and strengthen the collective body of national extension work devoted to rural community development. We are completing the analyses of the USDA-funded small farms industry clusters research project, and will be preparing outreach materials to disseminate widely using our website and webinars. We are continuing to work with our partners on the Eastern Seaboard food security project, and will be compiling a spatial inventory of the food system infrastructure in the region. Our ARC-sponsored collaborative research will also lead to the creation of web-based county-level indices of water quality and quantity that can be used by extension stakeholders to better understand conditions in their communities for economic growth, and to develop alternative water use plans, etc. The Northeast Center continued to serve in its primary capacity of convening experts and educators in the region with the specific goals of improving flows and exchanges of information; enhancing the capacity of the land grant system to engage effectively the pressing problems facing communities while eliminating duplication of effort and programs and forming teams around critical emerging issues to develop grant proposals that will lead to increased flows of resources into the region. PARTICIPANTS: The What Works conference audience included Extension Educators, Business Counselors, Services Providers, Technical Assistance Providers in Tourism, Agriculture, Micro and Home-Based Business, Rural Community & Economic Development Specialists, Community-Based Organizations, Municipal Officials, Lenders, Planning & Land- Use Professionals, Business Owners, and Foundation Representatives from across the Northeast region and the U.S. The Center's Board of Directors represent the University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, Delaware State University, Rutgers University, University of Maryland, West Virginia State University, West Virginia University and Penn State University, as well as Farm Foundation, MidAtlantic Farm Credit and the Eastern Regional Conference/Council of State Governments. Members of the NERCRD Technical Advisory Committee include Extension educators and researchers from the University of Maine, University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, University of Maryland - College Park and Eastern Shore, West Virginia University and West Virginia State University. Stakeholders from the region provided information about conferences and other projects in their states for inclusion in the NERCRD newsletter. TARGET AUDIENCES: The What Works 2011 Conference targeted practitioners, researchers, educators, and decision-makers from across the nation and provided an opportunity for participants to address critical issues in promoting entrepreneurship in the U.S. Pre- and post-conference meetings were held to collaborate with Northeast Community and Economic Development LGU Research and Extension Professionals and to provide an opportunity for the newly formed eXtension Enhancing Rural Capacity Community of Practice leadership team to meet. The NERCRD's Youth Entrepreneurship working group was formed to identify and develop curricula for young entrepreneurs in the region. Center webinars were developed to provide training for Extension Educators with Community and Economic Development interests and to facilitate collaboration across the Northeast region and the U.S. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
The NERCRD continued to develop strategic networks and collaborate with its stakeholders on regional issues, especially in the areas of entrepreneurship/economic development and energy, local foods/food security, clusters, and sustainability. In the past year, the Northeast Center was awarded three USDA-AFRI grants competed for directly as project manager or indirectly as a subcontractor. All three of these grants are on the topic of local or regional food systems and support of local agriculture in the Northeast U.S. generally. With these grants, which total nearly $6 million, the Center has solidified its strong leadership position and visibility in the local and regional food systems area, in terms of both research and Extension. The recently formed NERCRD Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) provided highly-valued input and advice into the Center's operations and plan of work over the past year. The Center conducted and distributed a network analysis with the TAC members to develop an image of existing collaborations and opportunities for new joint regional projects. Many favorable comments were made by participants in the successful What Works conference; What Works III is being planned for September 2012. A listserv of conference attendees has been developed for future networking opportunities. Members of the NERCRD's Youth Entrepreneurship working group were awarded a $25,000 competitive eCommerce grant to develop an interactive curriculum for young entrepreneurs. Few resources on business start-up and management target this young audience even though youth of all ages indicate an interest in starting a wide range of businesses from lemonade stands to landscaping. These interactive resources will introduce middle and high school aged youth to the concept of entrepreneurship as a career choice and develop entrepreneurial and life skills. This curriculum complements the existing e-Commerce materials for adults, but addresses the special needs of youth entrepreneurs as well. To make the case that the self-employed are worthy of policy attention because they have tangible economic impacts on local communities, educational materials summarizing the scientific literature that confirms these impacts were developed by Center staff and presented to Extension and other audiences in various venues. NERCRD and Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank staff collaborated on a study exploring the relationship between self-employment and income growth, employment growth, and change in poverty in metro and non-metro areas of the United States. They investigated the impact of the relative size of the self-employment sector as measured by the share of nonfarm proprietorships (NFPs) in total full and part-time employment on three key economic performance indicators: income growth, employment growth and changes in family poverty rates. Results indicate that higher self-employment rates are associated with statistically significant increases over time in income and employment growth, and reductions in poverty rates in non-metro counties. Similar effects occur for metro county income and employment, but not for poverty dynamics.
Publications
- The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. 2011. Annual Report 2010, Penn State University. University Park, PA. 24 pp. (Report to Federal Sponsor). http://nercrd.psu.edu/Publications/Reports/AnnualReport2010.pdf
- Goetz, S. J., M. D. Partridge, D. S. Rickman and S. Majumda. 2011. Sharing the Gains of Local Economic Growth: Race to the Top vs. Race to the Bottom Economic Development. Environment and Planning C, Government and Policy 29(3):428-456.
- Fleming, D. and S. J. Goetz. 2011. Does Local Firm Ownership Matter Economic Development Quarterly 25(3)August:277-81.
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