THE NORTHEAST REGIONAL CENTER FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT - 2015

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: OTHER GRANTS
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1007288
• Grant No.: 2015-51150-23873
• Cumulative Award Amt.: $237,680.00
• Proposal No.: 2015-07440
• Project Start Date: Aug 15, 2015
• Project End Date: Aug 14, 2018
• Grant Year: 2015
• Program Code: [UU.R]- Rural Development Centers

Recipient Organization
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
408 Old Main
UNIVERSITY PARK,PA 16802-1505

Performing Department
Agricultural Economics, Sociol

Non Technical Summary
We propose to implement the programs and activities approved by the Center's Board of Directors at the Fall 2014 Board Meeting in Wilmington, DE, and build on the past programs and successes documented in the Annual Report 2014. The leadership of the Northeast land grant universities continues to seek out the Center for its expertise as is evident in an invitation to meet with Maine's Agricultural Council in February 2015 to discuss local food systems research, and a request from Penn State to assist with evaluating the impact of Extension programs, among other activities. Responding to input from the Center's Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Committee, we will continue our efforts of networking land-grant university stakeholders and other agencies in the Northeast as well as nationally. This includes exciting new initiatives to evaluate community economic development impacts and the sharing of programs across State lines. The Center's three key subject matter areas align closely with the priorities of the Northeast land grant universities, as well as USDA/NIFA as follows: entrepreneurship and job creation, including workforce development (NIFA priority 3); community, local and regional food systems, as related to childhood obesity, food safety, food access and capacity to feed the region and world (NIFA priorities 1, 4 and 5); and land use and balanced use of natural resources, addressing trade-offs between alternative forms of energy use and development, invasive species, and other issues (NIFA priority 2). This year we expect to expand our research into the area of mental health, including an assessment of the causes and consequences. In addition, we will provide support in the area of network analysis to that project, as well as to the Kauffman Foundation, which is seeking to better understand how entrepreneurs use Twitter for business purposes.

Animal Health Component

85%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

15%

Applied

85%

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
131	6050	3010	10%
605	6050	3010	15%
608	6050	3010	65%
608	6050	3080	10%

Knowledge Area
605 - Natural Resource and Environmental Economics; 608 - Community Resource Planning and Development; 131 - Alternative Uses of Land;

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

Field Of Science
3010 - Economics; 3080 - Sociology;

Keywords

employment

economic growth

communities

network analysis

Goals / Objectives
1. Community Capacity BuildingThe Center will continue its efforts linking stakeholders within the NE land-grant university system, at the suggestion of its Technical Advisory Committee. We are especially pleased to extend two existing cutting edge extension programs, which were selected by a team of distinguished scholars, including Dr. Lionel J. Beaulieu, Director of the Purdue Center for Regional Development and Director of Extension Community Development, Purdue University; Dr. Cornelia Flora, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Iowa State University; Research Professor at Kansas State University; Dr. Paul Gottlieb, Department chair, Associate Professor and Extension Specialists, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers; Erica Hildabridle, Emerging Center Scholar with the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development at Penn State University; Dr. Timothy Phipps, Associate Dean and Director, West Virginia Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, West Virginia University; Dr. Timothy Wojan, Regional Economist, Economic Research Service, USDA; and NERCRD Specialist Project Advisor: George Morse, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota and Extension Faculty Association, University of Maine. One of these programs is entitled the Futures Workshop and Emergency Economic Impact Analysis and the other is the First Impressions program. Both of these have the potential to significantly enhance our collaborators' ability to carry out meaningful and effective community development programing in the region.In addition, we will work over the course of the next year in implanting the community development impact measures that are already being used in the North Central and South regions. The indicators we are considering include: the number of businesses created, retained, or expanded; the number of jobs created; the number of jobs expanded or retained; the number of new leadership roles; dollars of grants secured or resources saved by communities. These kinds of indicators have been successfully compiled by the North Central region for a number of years, and they have generated considerable attention by USDA and other agencies in Washington, DC.2. Entrepreneurship and Job CreationAs noted last year, the social capital and self-employment research conducted at the Northeast Center continues to attract the attention of researchers (e.g., Chetty et al. 2014). This work was also cited at the April 2-3, 2015 Federal Reserve Bank (Board of Governors) conference held in Washington, DC, underscoring the growing importance that policy makers attach to the question of economic mobility. At the conference two suggestions were made to address rising inequality: one is to move families to places of better economic opportunities and the other was to understand the factors that lead to mobility, including social capital. It is our expectation that we will continue to be able to work especially on the latter set of questions. Related to this, one of the graduate students working with the Center continues to explore how local self-employment within communities can attenuate the negative effect of foreign imports within rural communities, building on the work of Autor et al. (2013). This work is being revised for a promising resubmission to the journal Small Business Economics. We have also been approached by the Kauffman Foundation of Entrepreneurship, based in Kansas City, to help them with a network-based analysis of how entrepreneurs use their Twitter accounts to obtain important information for their businesses. Especially exciting is that we expect to be able to conduct these analyses by gender, by age of business owner and by3. Local and Regional FoodsIn the upcoming year we will continue to conduct research on and develop educational materials around local and regional food systems development, building on our peer-reviewed research (e.g., Brown et al., 2014; Etemadnia et al., 2015). A new area we plan to explore is that of the relationship, if any, between local and regional food systems and obesity, on the one hand, and mental health, on the other (see also below). Newly available data sets at the county level will make this possible.4. Land Use and Balanced Use of Natural ResourcesAnother research and educational effort will revisit the question of trade-offs between land use, farming and urban development, a re-emerging concern in our region as the economy recovers, according to TAC member P. Gottlieb. A particularly intriguing question here is how climate change that makes possible new production possibilities over space will lead to new distribution patterns. Also, the on-going and expanding drought in the Western US has implications for food production possibilities in the Northeast. Related to this, our on-going research on commuting and migration has implications both for land use and for economic mobility described above, and this is another example of the Center's research across issue areas.5. Mental Health IssuesWe will continue to provide support to the CAPE project by analyzing Twitter feeds that contain key words related to mental health. Parallel to this, we will continue our research on the consequences and causes (Goetz et al. 2015) of poor mental health, by extending the causes to include the effects of climate change. Our preliminary estimates of the economic consequences of a single day of poor mental health are in the billions of dollars annually.

Project Methods
The following general procedures will be used. The Center will:(1) Conduct, promote and extend through outreach both think tank-level and peer-reviewed studies of agricultural development, entrepreneurship, land use and community vitality, including work that addresses farm industry clusters and local/regional food systems development. This effort has received a major boost now that the Policy Research Center (NARDeP) is functional, with two post-docs and faculty-consultant collaborators.(2) Organize and sponsor multi-disciplinary and multi-state educational efforts in the areas of community development impact assessment, entrepreneurship, balanced land use and vibrant and sustainable communities; as part of this, the Center will continue to expand its website as a tool for furthering the mission of the land grant system in the Northeast in community development; and(3) Continue to fulfill its other multiple networking responsibilities through strategic partnerships, conference calls, maintenance of listservs, conference participation, publications and by identifying leading-edge programs that can be shared across the states (and nationally) via webinars so as to reduce duplication of effort.

Progress 08/15/15 to 08/14/18

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, policymakers, planners, citizens and other audiences, depending on the topic. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As reported in the prior-year funding report, our current small grants program is providing 22 individuals from around the country the opportunity to engage in various forms of co-learning. The Center's extensive portfolio of external grants provide numerous professional development opportunities. For example, the Center currently employs three postdoctoral scholars, and two graduate research associates. Via collaboration on our agritourism funding proposal, a new faculty member and a PhD student gained valuable grant-writing experience. The NARSC special sessions provided learning opportunities for both attendees and presenters, many of whom were doctoral students at the time. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We share resources generated by the Center through our website, our bi-monthly newsletter, and multiple presentations given by the Director and postdoctoral scholars, as documented in our Annual Report. We plan to prepare briefs based on the papers presented at the NARSC special sessions described above, which will be distributed broadly via the RRDC networks. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We made significant progress in achieving the goals of this project. Our first small grants program, described above and launched in 2015, was so successful that we issued a new RFP in 2017, titled "Impacts of Successful Extension and Outreach Programs." This iteration of our funding program builds on the work of the Impact Indicators Learning Circle, which formed in 2015 to identify practical ways in which regional Extension staff can collect credible data to evaluate the impact of their CD programs. The RFP was designed to help Northeast Land Grant University faculty and educators adopt these impact measures while also encouraging collaboration across state lines. In response to this RFP, we funded three teams in 2017, comprising 22 people from nine states. They have reported that they are forging new multi-state knowledge-sharing networks that are sure to endure beyond the life of the funded projects. Our goal of linking Community, Economic, and Resource Development stakeholders extended beyond the region through our collaboration with the National Extension Tourism group. After sponsoring and attending the NET biennial conference in Princeton, NJ, in 2017, Director Goetz initiated talks with the group that has led to a re-energized partnership, through which we have lent considerable administrative support, as reported in the most recent progress report for the 2016 funding cycle. On the Entrepreneurship and Job Creation front, we collaborated with the Economic Research Service (ERS) on a proposal (funded this year for $500,000 over three years) aimed at understanding innovation in rural communities and finding ways for communities to support rural entrepreneurs. This project builds on our 2016 "Drivers of Rural Innovation and Implications for Community and Regional Economic Development" award program, which was established in partnership with ERS to support data access and research in rural business innovation and economic development. This project culminated in two special sessions at the 2017 North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) conference in Vancouver, BC: (1) Rural Innovation is Multifaceted: Findings from the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey and (2) Rural Innovation in Space: Findings from the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey. Our ongoing research on the interrelationships between economic complexity, diversity and resilience, as well as on the determinants of poverty in US counties has resulted in the publication of a number of manuscripts, most of which have been described in other funding reports. For example, our research on spatial variation in economic mobility revealed that community characteristics often associated with upward mobility (e.g., school quality) play out differently in rural and urban areas, suggesting that rural and urban communities need different policies to boost economic mobility. Our research on the consequences and causes of poor mental health is ongoing, and documents the economic impacts of poor mental health on the U.S. Economy. For example, our analysis published in the Review of Regional Studies of economic and demographic data from 2008 to 2014 shows that a single extra poor mental health day in a month was associated with a 1.84 percent drop in the per capita real income growth rate, resulting in $53 billion less total income each year. The effect is stronger in rural counties, where a poor mental health day was associated with a reduction of 2.3 percent in income growth, compared with only a .87 percent reduction in urban counties. This suggests that investing in mental health resources may be one way of lowering the economic costs of poor mental health, particularly in the harder-hit rural counties. In another study, presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Allied Social Sciences Association, we extended our research on causes of poor mental health to include the effects of climate change. We found that a higher number of natural disasters experienced historically in a county is correlated with an increase in opioid overdoses, which suggests that a changing climate (as predicted by climatologists) could produce more extreme weather patterns, which could then have an effect on opioid overdoses and deaths. We successfully completed out our signature food-systems research project, Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast (EFSNE), which made significant gains in understanding the extent to which the region can increase production of certain foods, and potentially better meet the food needs of low-income populations in the locations they studied. The project continues to bear fruit in the form of publications, presentations, and outreach products. We collaborated with partners at Penn State, University of Vermont, and Oklahoma State University on a new funding proposal that, if funded, will seek to advance understanding of the factors that contribute to growth in agritourism - defined to include direct sales, education, hospitality, entertainment, and outdoor recreation - at the US county level by examining the roles of agglomeration and other factors in supporting agritourism among small- and medium-sized farms.

Publications

• Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2017 Citation: "Rural Innovation is Multifaceted: Findings from the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey." Special session (1 of 2) for Rural/Regional Development Sessions, North American Regional Science Council conference, November 2017, Vancouver, BC.
• Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2017 Citation: "Rural Innovation in Space: Findings from the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey." Special session (2 of 2) for Rural/Regional Development Sessions, North American Regional Science Council conference, November 2017, Vancouver, BC.

Progress 08/15/16 to 08/14/17

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, policymakers, planners, citizens and other audiences, depending on the topic. Changes/Problems:Our What Works in Rural Business Innovation and Economic Development workshop was scheduled to take place May 15-17, 2017 as a joint conference with the Universal Design Today and Create West Virginia organizations. Unfortunately, due to a major sponsor (who was recruited by another group that was co-organizing the conference with us) pulling out of the Universal Design Today conference, we ultimately decided to cancel the conference in consultation with our presenters. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As reported in the prior-year funding report, our Learning Community on Impact Indicators provided 19 individuals from around the country the opportunity to engage in co-learning about documenting evidence of impacts. We continue to share the collective learnings of this team through a booklet made available on our website, and at conferences. The two small grants teams engaged in cross-state collaboration and co-learning have continued to make numerous presentations at conferences, workshops and meetings. We supported a graduate student, who successfully defended his dissertation on intergenerational mobility in May. We supported the CAPE project, which has held numerous webinars and has developed a curriculum for communities facing behavioral health issues. We also support the Health Insurance, Rural Economic Development and Agriculture (HIREDnAg) project, which is preparing for an October 2017 webinar on Incorporating Health Insurance and Health Care Into Farm and Ranch Viability and Risk Management. The Center's extensive portfolio of external grants provide numerous professional development opportunities. For example, the EFSNE project, now in its seventh year, is supporting two postdoctoral scholars. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We share resources generated by the Center through our website, our bi-monthly newsletter, and multiple presentations given by the Director and postdoctoral scholars, as documented in our Annual Report. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Upon completion of our TAC-led analysis of the region, we expect to identify opportunities for forging new partnerships that will leverage the expertise of Land-Grant Universities to respond to CRED issues that are shared by NE states. We will award grants to two or more regional teams, and will provide support to facilitate their collaboration and further embed impact data-collection in NE Extension programming. We will explore the possibility of rescheduling our What Works in Rural Innovation conference that was postponed for reasons beyond our control, but which resulted in several strong presentation proposals from Extension staff throughout the region. In addition we will continue our research on the interrelationships between economic complexity, diversity and resilience, as well as on the determinants of poverty in US counties. We will also work with ERS collaborators on a competitive NIFA proposal related to rural innovation, if funded.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We approached our goal of linking stakeholders within the NE land-grant university system from many fronts. Our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) led an effort to identify emerging issue areas to which the Center may be well-positioned to coordinate a multi-state response. This effort included an analysis of NE states' economic performance during the years 2001-2014, conducted by Dr. Paul Gottlieb (Rutgers) and his graduate student. Heather Stephens (WVU) and her undergraduate student conducted companion research to identify significant community, rural, and economic development challenge areas faced by NE states and what programs are already in place to address these issues. In support of this research, the Center conducted a complementary regional survey of program leaders and Extension directors to identify emerging CRED issues in the region and how the Center might best support LGU responses to these issues. We also launched a new Request for Proposals to fund multi-state teams of Extension and Research staff to build upon prior work of documenting impacts. This RFP was designed to encourage additional regional collaboration, due to the resounding success of our prior small-grants program that funded the transfer of successful Extension programs across state lines and which continues to have ripple effects throughout the region. For example, team members who participated in economic impact analysis training have spearheaded an informal community-of-practice around data use in CRED programming. UNH members of the First Impressions team recently trained UNH undergraduates majoring in community planning to conduct First Impression studies in additional NH communities. In the area of entrepreneurship and job creation, our research on the interaction between human capital and natural amenities was published, and we collaborated on a companion press release for lay audiences. On the mental health front, our work exploring the economic effects of poor mental health days has resulted in a forthcoming paper (Davlasheridze, Goetz and Han), that shows from 2008 to 2014 a single extra poor mental health day in a month was associated with a 1.84 percent drop in per capita real income growth rate, or $53 billion less total income each year. These effects were more pronounced in rural counties. Our findings suggest that, particularly in the harder hit rural counties, investing in mental health resources may be one way of lowering the economic costs of poor mental health. We continued to disseminate our findings on the relationship between economic complexity, diversity and resilience and other determinants of poverty in US counties, at various venues. Finally, our administration of a grants program focused on innovation and its role in the success of rural firms has resulted in our co-coordinating (with ERS) a special session on Rural Innovation at the North American Regional Science Council conference in Vancouver later this year.

Publications

• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. (2016). 2015 Annual Report. University Park, PA.

Progress 08/15/15 to 08/14/16

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 regions, policymakers, planners, citizens and other audiences, depending on the topic. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As reported in the prior-year funding report, our Learning Community on Impact Indicators provided 19 individuals from around the country the opportunity to engage in co-learning about documenting evidence of impacts. The collective learnings of this team have been shared through a booklet made available on our website, and at conferences. The two small grants teams engaged in cross-state collaboration and co-learning, and also have made numerous presentations at conferences, workshops and meetings, and through webinars which are archived on multiple websites. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We share resources generated by the Center through our website, our bi-monthly newsletter, and multiple presentations given by the Director and postdoctoral scholars. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the Center's October 2016 in-person meeting, our Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) recommended undertaking an analysis of the region to ascertain the emerging economic development strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in each of the Northeast states. We expect that the results of this analysis will inform the Center's focal areas for the next several years. The TAC also proposed developing an RFP to continue the work that began in 2015 of measuring the impact of Extension in the Northeast (reported on in prior-year funding report), including funding a fellow to lead this work. We currently are exploring this proposal with members of our Board. We also are organizing our fourth What Works conference, scheduled for May 2017 and focusing on rural innovation and universal design. In addition we will continue our research on the interrelationships between economic complexity, diversity and resilience, as well as on the determinants of poverty in US counties.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? As reported in the prior-year funding report, the small grants program has been very successful and the results continue to be disseminated widely among the CRD leaders and educators in the region. This work was augmented with peer-reviewed research (Goetz and Davlasheridze 2016) showing that Cooperative Extension spending helped to keep more than136,000 farmers in agriculture over the period 1985-2010. This work was widely reported in public media nationally as well as in APLU outlets such as kglobal and the Monday ECOP minute. Our work on the effects of self-employment in mitigating adverse trade shocks was accepted for publication in a scientific journal (Liang and Goetz 2016) and the results are being disseminated, including through a press release. Research on the interaction between human capital and natural amenities was similarly accepted for publication and is currently in press. This work shows how natural amenities can reinforce the effect of education in stimulating economic growth and vice versa. We are also working on a set of documents entitled "Rural Counts." On the mental health front, the director was invited to make a major presentation on CAPE to the NERA/NEED joint summer meeting, and a manuscript that documents the detrimental effects of poor mental health on economic growth is being revised for resubmission to a journal. We are also working on a new paper about the determinants of poverty, including persistent poverty, using panel data over three decades.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2015 Citation: Goetz, S.J. An Overview of Food Systems Research at the NERCRD. Presented to the Southern Region Development Center Local and Regional Foods Workshop, Crystal City, VA, August 11-13, 2015.