Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/20
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?The state-wide forums held in DE, MD, and OH convened 200 people around the topic of health, mental health, and health insurance, resulting in more informed and engaged citizens, policy makers, and researchers. Our press releases, which provide a lay-person-friendly summary of our research, resulted in an unknown number of mainstream media consumers learning about latent innovation, life expectancy, and land-use research. Two postdocs gained experience working with Census data, and all postdocs gained experience in publishing and presenting their research. More than 80 Extension, agency, and private sector staff learned about sustainable tourism programming at the National Extension Tourism conference; NERCRD staff gained valuable conference-planning experience by supporting this effort. The presentations and papers authored by Center researchers have provided learning opportunities to a countless number of audience members and readers across multiple disciplines. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We shared resources generated by the Center through our website, press releases, our bi-monthly newsletter, social media platforms and multiple presentations given by the Director and postdoctoral scholars and partners, as documented in our Annual Report. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
IMPACT: Examples of new knowledge resulting from this project includes: - Improved understanding of the extent to which Extension programs nationwide address tourism and outdoor recreation in their programming, which will be used to identify programmatic gaps and challenges, and potential areas of improvement and future collaborations. - Our research demonstrated that American communities with more fast food restaurants, a larger share of extraction industry-based jobs, or higher population density have shorter life expectancies. This new knowledge can help communities identify and implement changes that may promote longer lifespans among their residents. - We developed a more comprehensive measure of innovation, showing that innovation is widespread even in rural places not typically thought of as innovative, bringing economic benefits to businesses and communities. This new knowledge will help decision makers think in new ways about innovation and how they can support it, and the innovation index we developed is freely available for use by other researchers. Examples of new conditions resulting from this project include: - The impact indicator reporting system developed through NERCRD efforts and amplified through our 2017/18 small-grant program is being used by Penn State Extension to streamline their annual impact reporting. - A 250% increase in the number of people engaged in the National Extension Tourism (NET) network (from 172 in 2018 to 443 in 2020), resulting in more efficient transfer of programs across states and regions. This change in conditions is in part a result of communication and logistical support our Center has provided the group. - A new knowledge-sharing network has formed in New England states around best practices in helping communities implement nature-based economic development activities. - 200 people in three states are more informed and engaged around the topic of health and health insurance as a risk-management issue for farms and rural communities. Goal 1: Extension Community Capacity Building During the past 12 months, we considerably ramped up our support to the NET group, assisting with logistics and delivery of a national conference that drew 80+ people from Extension, government, and the private sector. We facilitated their relationship building efforts with the other RDCs, and federal agencies including National Park Service and Forest Service. We provided financial support to their in-person strategic planning meeting, which resulted in a five-year strategic plan available at https://bit.ly/3kcbf6Q. Our small-grants program, which had funded three teams in its 2017-18 funding cycle, continues to serve as an important vehicle for the development of collaborative relationships across the region. We amplified the outcomes of each of the funded teams and will continue to do so, e.g., widely circulating the infobrief produced by the Downtowns and Trails team, developed to share best practices communities can use to leverage their natural assets in support of economic development goals. We launched a new round of funding in 2019, and selected four multi-state teams comprising 35 individuals from nine states in new projects. Goal 2: Entrepreneurship and Job Creation Our research showing that innovation is widespread even in rural places was published in Research Policy and publicized widely via a Penn State press release, appearing in Forbes, The Daily Yonder, etc. These findings will help decision makers think in new ways about innovation and how they can support it, e.g., by hosting trade shows that encourage business interactions and thinking strategically about targeting industries for recruitment that complement local innovation spillovers. The research collaboration with ARC and WV resulted in a technical report and Guidebook for Practitioners, which identifies the role that cultivating entrepreneurs and developing resources for business startups plays in economically resilient communities--something that PI Goetz explained during a 12-minute program on Wisconsin Public Radio. Goal 3: Local and Regional Foods As part of another NIFA-funded project (USDA-NIFA 2017-67023-26906), we carried out extensive research on agricultural clusters. For example, our research published in the Journal of Wine Economics found that craft breweries are fueling an unprecedented geographic expansion of hop production in the U.S., suggesting new opportunities for farmers in some places. Our 2018 NIFA-funded conference on the Economic Analysis of Food System Drivers and Effects resulted in a peer-reviewed collection of conference papers published this year in Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. Goal 4: Land Use and Balanced Use of Natural Resources Our aforementioned study on hop production was the first to systematically show that the number of hop farms in a state is related to the number of craft breweries. We found that from 2007 to 2017, the number of breweries in the U.S. more than quadrupled from 992 to more than 4,000, and that the number of breweries in a state is associated with more hop farms and hop acres five years later. The number of hop farms grew from 68 to 817, and hop acreage expanded from 31,145 to 59,429 acres, position the U.S. as the largest producer of hops globally, both in terms of acreage and production. Goal 5: Mental Health Issues In addition to our own mental health research described in other funding reports, our small-grant program supported a team that helped farm communities create their own solutions to health care problems, including mental health care. Through statewide forums in Delaware, Maryland, and Ohio, stakeholders developed short-term collaborative efforts to their states' issues, resulting in outcomes and impacts outlined in our 2019 Annual Report. For example, a team at the MD forum pursued seed funding from the University of Maryland to assess stress felt by MD farmers, which ultimately led to a $1M Rural Opioid Technical Assistance grant. A number of Mental Health First Aid trainings also were implemented in MD and DE as a result of these forums.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Arbogast, Douglas, Daniel Eades, and Stephan Goetz. The State of Extension and Tourism: Capacity and Opportunities for Cooperative Extension. Presented at the National Extension Tourism Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation conference, Astoria, OR, October 9, 2019.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Dobis, Elizabeth A., Heather M. Stephens, Mark Skidmore, and Stephan J. Goetz. Explaining the Spatial Variation in American Life Expectancy. Social Science & Medicine 246 (February 2020): 112759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112759.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Goetz, Stephan J., and Yicheol Han. Latent Innovation in Local Economies. Research Policy 49, no. 2 (March 2020): 103909. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2019.103909.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Schmidt, Claudia, and Alyssa Collins. Hemp and Hop Outlook. Presented at the Summer Outlook Meeting, Cincinnati, OH, August 15, 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
- Tian, Zheng, Elizabeth Dobis, Andy Hira, Neil Reid, and Stephan J. Goetz. Detecting Agricultural Clusters with the Spatial-IO Location Quotient. Presented at the 66th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International, Pittsburgh, PA, November 14, 2019.
|
Progress 09/01/17 to 08/28/20
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?The state-wide forums held in DE, MD, and OH convened 200 people around the topic of health, mental health, and health insurance, resulting in more informed and engaged citizens, policy makers, and researchers. Our press releases, which provide a lay-person-friendly summary of our research, resulted in an unknown number of mainstream media consumers learning about latent innovation, life expectancy, and land-use research. Two postdocs gained experience working with Census data, and all postdocs gained experience in publishing and presenting their research. More than 80 Extension, agency, and private sector staff learned about sustainable tourism programming at the National Extension Tourism conference; NERCRD staff gained valuable conference-planning experience by supporting this effort. The presentations and papers authored by Center researchers have provided learning opportunities to a countless number of audience members and readers across multiple disciplines. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We shared resources generated by the Center through our website, press releases, our bi-monthly newsletter, social media platforms and multiple presentations given by the Director and postdoctoral scholars and partners, as documented in our Annual Report. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
IMPACT: Examples of new knowledge resulting from this project includes: - Improved understanding of the extent to which Extension programs nationwide address tourism and outdoor recreation in their programming, which will be used to identify programmatic gaps and challenges, and potential areas of improvement and future collaborations. - Our research demonstrated that American communities with more fast food restaurants, a larger share of extraction industry-based jobs, or higher population density have shorter life expectancies. This new knowledge can help communities identify and implement changes that may promote longer lifespans among their residents. - We developed a more comprehensive measure of innovation, showing that innovation is widespread even in rural places not typically thought of as innovative, bringing economic benefits to businesses and communities. This new knowledge will help decision makers think in new ways about innovation and how they can support it, and the innovation index we developed is freely available for use by other researchers. Examples of new conditions resulting from this project include: - The impact indicator reporting system developed through NERCRD efforts and amplified through our 2017/18 small-grant program is being used by Penn State Extension to streamline their annual impact reporting. - A 250% increase in the number of people engaged in the National Extension Tourism (NET) network (from 172 in 2018 to 443 in 2020), resulting in more efficient transfer of programs across states and regions. This change in conditions is in part a result of communication and logistical support our Center has provided the group. - A new knowledge-sharing network has formed in New England states around best practices in helping communities implement nature-based economic development activities. - 200 people in three states are more informed and engaged around the topic of health and health insurance as a risk-management issue for farms and rural communities. Goal 1: Extension Community Capacity Building During the past 12 months, we considerably ramped up our support to the NET group, assisting with logistics and delivery of a national conference that drew 80+ people from Extension, government, and the private sector. We facilitated their relationship building efforts with the other RDCs, and federal agencies including National Park Service and Forest Service. We provided financial support to their in-person strategic planning meeting, which resulted in a five-year strategic plan available at https://bit.ly/3kcbf6Q. Our small-grants program, which had funded three teams in its 2017-18 funding cycle, continues to serve as an important vehicle for the development of collaborative relationships across the region. We amplified the outcomes of each of the funded teams and will continue to do so, e.g., widely circulating the infobrief produced by the Downtowns and Trails team, developed to share best practices communities can use to leverage their natural assets in support of economic development goals. We launched a new round of funding in 2019, and selected four multi-state teams comprising 35 individuals from nine states in new projects. Goal 2: Entrepreneurship and Job Creation Our research showing that innovation is widespread even in rural places was published in Research Policy and publicized widely via a Penn State press release, appearing in Forbes, The Daily Yonder, etc. These findings will help decision makers think in new ways about innovation and how they can support it, e.g., by hosting trade shows that encourage business interactions and thinking strategically about targeting industries for recruitment that complement local innovation spillovers. The research collaboration with ARC and WV resulted in a technical report and Guidebook for Practitioners, which identifies the role that cultivating entrepreneurs and developing resources for business startups plays in economically resilient communities--something that PI Goetz explained during a 12-minute program on Wisconsin Public Radio. Goal 3: Local and Regional Foods As part of another NIFA-funded project (USDA-NIFA 2017-67023-26906), we carried out extensive research on agricultural clusters. For example, our research published in the Journal of Wine Economics found that craft breweries are fueling an unprecedented geographic expansion of hop production in the U.S., suggesting new opportunities for farmers in some places. Our 2018 NIFA-funded conference on the Economic Analysis of Food System Drivers and Effects resulted in a peer-reviewed collection of conference papers published this year in Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. Goal 4: Land Use and Balanced Use of Natural Resources Our aforementioned study on hop production was the first to systematically show that the number of hop farms in a state is related to the number of craft breweries. We found that from 2007 to 2017, the number of breweries in the U.S. more than quadrupled from 992 to more than 4,000, and that the number of breweries in a state is associated with more hop farms and hop acres five years later. The number of hop farms grew from 68 to 817, and hop acreage expanded from 31,145 to 59,429 acres, position the U.S. as the largest producer of hops globally, both in terms of acreage and production. Goal 5: Mental Health Issues In addition to our own mental health research described in other funding reports, our small-grant program supported a team that helped farm communities create their own solutions to health care problems, including mental health care. Through statewide forums in Delaware, Maryland, and Ohio, stakeholders developed short-term collaborative efforts to their states' issues, resulting in outcomes and impacts outlined in our 2019 Annual Report. For example, a team at the MD forum pursued seed funding from the University of Maryland to assess stress felt by MD farmers, which ultimately led to a $1M Rural Opioid Technical Assistance grant. A number of Mental Health First Aid trainings also were implemented in MD and DE as a result of these forums.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Arbogast, Douglas, Daniel Eades, and Stephan Goetz. The State of Extension and Tourism: Capacity and Opportunities for Cooperative Extension. Presented at the National Extension Tourism Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation conference, Astoria, OR, October 9, 2019.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Dobis, Elizabeth A., Heather M. Stephens, Mark Skidmore, and Stephan J. Goetz. Explaining the Spatial Variation in American Life Expectancy. Social Science & Medicine 246 (February 2020): 112759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112759.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Goetz, Stephan J., and Yicheol Han. Latent Innovation in Local Economies. Research Policy 49, no. 2 (March 2020): 103909. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2019.103909.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Schmidt, Claudia, and Alyssa Collins. Hemp and Hop Outlook. Presented at the Summer Outlook Meeting, Cincinnati, OH, August 15, 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
- Tian, Zheng, Elizabeth Dobis, Andy Hira, Neil Reid, and Stephan J. Goetz. Detecting Agricultural Clusters with the Spatial-IO Location Quotient. Presented at the 66th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International, Pittsburgh, PA, November 14, 2019.
|
Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19
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?Through its small grants program, the Center has provided professional development to 22 Extension faculty and staff, who have in turn provided training to farmers, retailers, community volunteers, and more than 120 forum attendees. During the reporting period, the Center employed six postdoctoral researchers, all of whom have gained on-the-job experience in working on multi-institution teams, performing complex analyses, and presenting work to multiple audiences. Postdoc Sarah Rocker has gained additional experience in conducting outreach work with practitioners, coordinating a webinar series that provided training to more than 400 people. Two postdocs and a staff member attended the NACDEP conference to gain knowledge about Extension efforts underway nationwide in the Community and Economic Development program areas. Through her role in assisting the NET group, staff member Kristen Devlin has been immersed in the process of planning a national conference. The Center's newsletter, which is issued bi-monthly, shares resources such as the Infobrief produced by the Downtowns and Trails team and the ERS-funded rural innovation research briefs with more than 1,000 subscribers in the region and beyond. The special session at the 2018 Conference of the PA Chapter of American Planning Association, organized by Stephan Goetz, provided planners with a research context to broaden their understanding of how planning can support new opportunities in rural areas. Similarly, attendees at Goetz's presentation at the NGA provided members of state governments with an overview of the rural trends, issues, and opportunities in the region. He provided a similar overview to West Virginia University Extension staff as the keynote speaker at their annual meeting. The presentations and papers authored by Center researchers have provided learning opportunities to a countless number of audience members and readers in multiple disciplines. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We shared resources generated by the Center through our website, our bi-monthly newsletter, social media platforms, 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?We will ramp up support of the NET group as they close in on their national conference in October. We will continue to promote our small-grant RFP until it closes at the end of September, and will select a new round of grantees to fund. At the same time, we will continue to leverage the outcomes of the teams funded in our 2017-2018 small grant cycle by widely sharing the resources they generated with others in the region and beyond. We will continue to conduct research in the areas of local and regional food systems, economic resilience, behavioral health, and regional economic development with a special emphasis on innovation and quality of life issues. We are scheduled to make a number of presentations at additional venues, including the NARSC Conference where Stephan Goetz will be delivering the presidential address.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In October 2018, we convened our Board of Directors (BOD) and Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) in Geneva, NY, for an annual in-person meeting where two topic areas were suggested as priority focal points for Center research and programming: innovation and quality of life. The BOD also recommended recruiting a Fellow to lead efforts related to these focal areas. We have engaged with Dr. Charlie French, Program Leader for CED with University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, who will conduct research around rural innovation and strategies used by rural communities that have rebounded from economic decline, beginning 9/2019. We are continuing our small grants program, and issued a request for proposals in June that places special emphasis on innovation and tourism. This RFP builds on the success of our 2015-16 and 2017-18 small grants programs, the latter resulting in three multi-state projects in the region. Two of these funded teams wrapped up their projects this year, and a third is close to completion. The Downtowns and Trails group led by Dr. Shannon Rogers at University of New Hampshire, produced an infobrief based on their inquiry into the best practices and strategies for communities to leverage their local trail systems for economic development goals. The infobrief was shared widely via our Center newsletter and social media accounts and has already served as a resource to Extension staff in PA. This group also conducted a pilot study in Bristol, NH, training community volunteers to collect data and providing action recommendations based on these data, resulting in a community action committee that will work on implementing some of these ideas. The Downtown and Trails team was honored for their work by the National Association for Community Development Extension Professionals (NACDEP) with a Northeast Regional Cross-Program Team Award. A 2nd team led by Dr. Jane Kolodinsky at University of Vermont implemented the impact reporting system described in the "Impact Indicators Tips Booklet" (NERCRD, 2016) for their established Extension program titled "Farm Fresh Food Boxes," which facilitates farms and rural grocery stores working together to provide customers a weekly CSA-style box of produce. Through their impact data collection, they identified the number of farms and retailers that made changes to their business and marketing management; the number of hours devoted to program implementation; and, the number of firms and jobs retained. The group presented on their work at NACDEP in Asheville, NC. The 3rd funded team is looking at developing a coordinated community risk management approach to health and health insurance among farm enterprises. To date they have held two state-wide forums in Delaware and Maryland, which engaged 120 participants including members of each state's government. Through presentations and case studies, the team familiarized participants with health and farm issues faced by farmers and facilitated sessions to brainstorm strategies for improving health and farm vitality. A third forum is planned for Ohio in September 2019. The work of this team builds on the HIREDnAgproject, led by Shoshanah Inwood of The Ohio State University, which recently was recognized with an "Honorable Mention" award for 2018's Outstanding Choices Article. We continued to provide significant support to the National Extension Tourism (NET) team, which has spent much of this reporting period planning its 2019 national conference on Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation, scheduled for October 8-11 in Astoria, OR. With the assistance of staff at the other RRDCs, we have widely publicized the group's call for presentations and conference registration. We are also assisting with conference logistics, coordinating communications with speakers and updating the conference website. The conference will include a plenary presentation of the national NET survey conducted with assistance from NERCRD in 2018 and expanded in 2019 to include input from National Sea Grant educators. In addition to providing administrative support to this group, the Center facilitated the development of a research and extension program funding proposal for the 2019-2020 grant cycle. We continue our research on economic resilience, rural innovation, behavioral health, regional economic development, and local and regional food systems (including agritourism) and have hired two additional postdocs who will accelerate this work. Dr. Devon Meadowcroft is assisting with the NIFA-funded Rural Emergence and Vitality project and has received security clearance to access the Census data required to move this work forward. Dr. Sarah Rocker, who previously worked with the Center as a graduate student researcher, has been coordinating the AMS-funded technical assistance project for grantees of the Farmers Market and Local Foods Promotion Programs (FMLFPP). Through her efforts, along with those of Penn State Extension Educator Brian Moyer, the project (AMSTA) and its team of mentors hosted 7 webinars with 425 attendees and provided 120 hours of one-on-one consulting to more than 55 FMLFPP grantees, among other accomplishments. Drs. Elizabeth Dobis and Zheng Tian have continued to contribute to the NIFA-funded Agricultural Clusters project led by Dr. Paul Gottlieb at Rutgers University and to the EDA-funded project led by Timothy Slaper at Indiana University looking at Regional Economic Development strategies. Dr. Dobis also has contributed to work looking at geographic inequality in life expectancy in the U.S. with TAC member Heather Stephens (WVU) and NCRCRD Director Mark Skidmore. Dobis and Tian presented their findings at the annual meetings of Western Regional Science Association in Napa, CA; the Southern Regional Science Association in Arlington, VA; the American Association of Wine Economists in Vienna, Austria, and the North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association in San Antonio, TX. Our research on rural trends, opportunities, and issues in the NE has generated great interest since it was originally presented at the 2018 joint summer meeting of NERA and NEED, resulting in invited presentations to the National Governors Association, WVU Extension, and the PA Planning Association, the latter of which was part of a special session organized by Stephan Goetz (PI) that focused on how rural areas can contend with the changing nature of the economy, and specifically on the potential roles of the planning community in supporting new opportunities. Related work on rural-urban interdependency was presented at the Land-Grant mini-conference in Coral Springs, Florida, resulting in a request from CARET Member Rod Moesel to share the presentation with the Oklahoma Farm Bureau. Dr. Goetz also delivered the keynote at the Northeast Agricultural and Resource Economics Association (NAREA) conference in Portsmouth, NH, on Agriculture in the NE. Through its capacity to produce and distribute communication pieces throughout the region and beyond, the Center has amplified the work of several of the grants in its research portfolio and of projects led by partners at other institutions. For example, we produced press releases for work by the now-closed NIFA-funded food security project (EFSNE) and the ARC-funded Economic Resilience project. We also launched a new series of research briefs intended to distill the findings of the ERS-funded project which looked at Rural Innovation using the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey. In June, the Center sponsored an Intergenerational Fair to highlight some ways in which the skills, knowledge and experience of older adults help to strengthen families and contribute to community quality of life for all residents, regardless of age. We expect to take the outcomes of this event and make it available to educators elsewhere in the Northeast, as well as nationally, thereby contributing to our community capacity building objective.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Devlin, Kristen. 2018. R&D-Heavy Firms Thrive in Diverse Economies. Penn State News, September 28, 2018.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Devlin, Kristen. 2018. Study of Northeast Food System Advances Understanding of Regional Potential. Penn State News, October 18, 2018.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Goetz, Stephan J. 2018. Rural Trends, Issues and Opportunities in the Northeast U.S. Presented at the Keynote address at WVU Extension Meeting at Jackson Mill, September 19.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Goetz, Stephan J., and Zheng Tian. 2018. The Decline of Farm and Rise of Wage Employment in the U.S.: The Effect of Government Subsidies on Farmers. Presented at the 58th Congress of the European Regional Science Association, Cork, Ireland, August 30.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Han, Yicheol, and Stephan J. Goetz. 2019. Measuring Network Rewiring over Time. PLOS ONE 14 (7): e0220295. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220295.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Rocker, Sarah. 2019. Build That Network! The Power of Social Connectivity for Developing the Mid-Atlantic Small Grain Value Chain. Presented at the Philadelphia Grain and Malt Symposium, Philadelphia, PA, March 2.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Dobis, Elizabeth A., Stephan J. Goetz, Mark Skidmore, and Heather M. Stephens. 2018. American Life Expectancy: Geographic Inequality and Temporal Change. Presented at the 65th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International, San Antonio, TX, November 8.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Goetz, Stephan J. 2018. Rural Mega-Trends and Their Implications. Presented at the PA Chapter of the American Planning Association 2018 Annual Conference, Erie, PA, October 15.
|
Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/18
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 mentioned in our prior-year funding report, our multi-state Extension RFA is providing 22 individuals from around the country the opportunity to engage in collaborations that involve various forms of co-learning. The NET survey that we helped to administer provided a master's level graduate researcher experience in coding and mapping data. The related presentation at NACDEP was attended by roughly 15 people, and was shared with more than 1,100 NERCRD newsletter subscribers. NERCRD staff presented research findings to hundreds of participants at the previously mentioned SRSA meeting (March 2018, Philadelphia, PA), NAREA pre-conference workshop (June 2018, Philadelphia, PA), NACDEP meeting (June 2018, Cleveland, OH), the Wine Economics Association meeting (June 2018, Ithaca, NY), the IGU Mini-Conference on Rural-Urban Linkages for Sustainable Development (July 2018, Innsbruck, Austria), and the AAEA special sessions (August 2018, Washington, DC). Center Director Goetz provided insights into trends, issues, and opportunities at the rural-urban interface to Deans and Directors in the Northeast states at the joint annual meeting of the NE Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors (NERA) and the Northeast Extension Directors (NEED). By way of their participation on Center projects, several students also received training, including Penn State Doctoral Candidate Sarah Rocker, who was given opportunities to participate in professional speaking engagements, technical report writing, and co-authorship in academic publications through her work with the USDA-AMS funded technical assistance project (AMSTA). Ms. Rocker also gained experience in proposal development through her role as a collaborator on a funding proposal submitted in August 2018. Rutgers University undergraduate student Sean Gilbert continued to gain experience in economic impact analyses through his work with Paul Gottlieb on the TAC-led analysis of the Northeast states. The NERCRD newsletter, distributed approximately bi-monthly, provided its subscribers with updates on professional development opportunities, as well as on published resources from NERCRD and partners. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We shared resources generated by the Center through our website, our bi-monthly newsletter, and through the multiple presentations given at conferences and meetings by the Director and postdoctoral scholars, mentioned here and as documented in our Annual Report. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to pursue the objectives of the grants and projects already underway. In addition, through a new competitive USDA grant that we were awarded this year (The Role of Innovation in Rural Firm Emergence and Vitality) we will gain a better understanding of how innovation works in rural communities and will produce actionable ideas and practices that rural communities can use to inspire more innovation among established and budding entrepreneurs. We will continue to conduct research in the areas of local and regional food systems, economic resilience, behavioral health, and regional economic development and disseminate results through conference presentations and outreach papers. As described in the prior-year funding report, we are organizing a special session, focused on the rural economy, for the 2018 Conference of the PA Chapter of American Planning Association and are scheduled to make a number of presentations at additional venues, including the European Regional Science Association annual meeting in Cork, Ireland (August 2018), where two papers will be presented, and the NARSC conference in San Antonio, TX (November 2018), where four papers will be presented. In addition, we will present on strategies related to the "Good Jobs for All Americans" initiative of the National Governors Association at their Regional Leadership Workshopin Pittsburgh, PA (September 2018). Finally, we will continue to co-organize and attend quarterly meetings with the other RRDC directors and stakeholders to discuss national collaborations. Among these will be assisting the National Extension Tourism (NET) group with the planning of the 2019 NET/Sea Grant Joint conference in Oregon. We will bring to a close our NIFA-funded conference grant by co-editing a special issue of Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, and will make the presentations from the related workshop available as a resource on our website. Similarly, we will compile and make available a mini-proceedings from the special sessions we organized for AAEA. We will convene our Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Committee for an annual in-person meeting in Geneva, NY, in October 2018, during which we will discuss emerging opportunities in the regional community and economic development arena.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
As reported in the prior year funding report, the October 2017 in-person meeting of our Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Committee provided an opportunity to synthesize the findings of our TAC-led inquiry into the current and emerging economic and community-development challenges facing the region. One very clear finding from the TAC-led inquiry is that the Center should continue promoting and facilitating interstate collaborations. To this end, in addition to activities described in the prior-year funding report, the Center has led efforts to re-energize the RRDCs' partnership with the National Extension Tourism (NET) Design Team, which serves to connect Extension staff working in tourism across the nation, including a number of Community Development Extension staff within the Northeast region. Associate Director Heather Manzo and Center staff assisted NET with implementing a national survey of Extension-affiliated professionals to understand the geographic dispersal and varied disciplines working in this space. The survey was open during the first half of 2018, and captured tourism-related work in states with and without named tourism programs. For example, many land-grant staff reported working on Agritourism under administrative areas such as Agriculture Business or Food Systems programs. Another side of tourism programming includes recreational tourism, which may fall under Natural Resources, Forestry or Land Management programs. The survey helped create a deeper view into the collective body of tourism work at the national level by looking past organization-level definitions. These findings, as well as an Extension/ Land Grant opportunity roadmap were synthesized into a presentation at the 2018 National Association for Community Development Professionals (NACDEP) Conference held in Cleveland, Ohio. The presentation, entitled Tourism and Extension: Creating Best Practices to Better Help Rural Communities Develop Business Opportunities, was a multi-state collaboration between Douglas Arbogast and Daniel Eades (WVU), Stephan Goetz, Yicheol Han, and Heather Manzo (Penn State, NERCRD). It is archived on the NERCRD website. In addition to providing administrative support to this group, the Center facilitated the development of a research and Extension program funding proposal for the 2018-2019 grant cycle. TAC Chair Paul Gottlieb also presented at the Cleveland, OH, NACDEP conference on the economic analysis of Northeast states that he carried out as part of the TAC strategic planning effort, along with his co-author, Rutgers Undergraduate Student Sean Gilbert. Gottlieb and Gilbert used zip-code business pattern data and matched it to the U.S. Census classifications of urbanized and non-urbanized sections of the states to determine how employment has changed in the Northeast's rural and urban places and to explore trends in traditionally rural sectors, such as agriculture and mining. These data have been shared widely through direct emails to program leaders in the region, at the NACDEP presentation, and via the Center's newsletter in order to gather feedback that will provide context to the findings. The 2017-2018 Center-sponsored funding program aimed at building multi-state networks within the Extension system is well underway. This year's three funded teams are looking at: (1) creating a knowledge-sharing network in New England so that Extension can better help communities connect downtown economic development with local recreational trails; (2) the impacts of a multi-state research and Extension collaboration exploring a new way to link farmers and rural retailers; and (3) developing a coordinated community risk management approach to health and health insurance among farm enterprises. Another outcome of the October 2017 BOD/TAC in-person meeting was the identification of a new topic area to include in the Center's plan of work--the potential economics of industrial hemp production in the region. With support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Extension Service, the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences Office of Research and Graduate Education, and NERCRD, Associate Director Manzo worked with a multi-disciplinary team on an analysis exploring the production practices, economics, and policies around this crop. A resulting publication, Agricultural Alternatives: Industrial Hemp Production, has been disseminated through the NERCRD website and newsletter and through Penn State Extension's communication channels. During this reporting period, and through the support of the RRDC funding increase in addition to other grants, the Center hired two new postdoctoral researchers who have bolstered the Center's capacity to respond to emerging research needs and to reach more stakeholders. For example, Dr. Elizabeth Dobis is working with TAC Chair Paul Gottlieb (Rutgers University) on his USDA-NIFA funded project "Industry Clusters and the Location of Agriculture." The project is exploring which agricultural commodities exhibit knowledge-driven locational clustering, and what factors distinguish these commodities from those that do not cluster. Dobis presented on her research in support of Paul Gottlieb examining clustering/agglomeration patterns of wineries and grape growers at the June 2018 Wine Economics Association meeting in Ithaca, NY. Postdoctoral researcher Dr. Zheng Tian also is contributing to research on industrial agglomeration, working both with Paul Gottlieb's project and with an Economic Development Administration project led by Timothy Slaper at Indiana University. The latter seeks to build models and analytical tools that will help policy makers and practitioners to craft development strategies and policies tailored to a region's characteristics and capacities. Tian presented his research at the Regional Studies Association Global Conference in China in June 2018, and at the Southern Regional Science Meetings, Philadelphia, PA in March 2018. Also with a separate USDA grant, we organized a workshop in Philadelphia, PA on June 9-10, which attracted 25+ around the theme of "Advances in the Economic Analysis of Food System Drivers and Effects." The workshop featured a special presentation on the EFSNE project (the Center's USDA-NIFA funded food system project that ended earlier this year). Presentations will be archived on NERCRD website, and papers will be published in special issue of Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. Along with TAC Chair Paul Gottlieb, Board Member Timothy Wojan (ERS), and SRDC Director Steve Turner, NERCRD Director Stephan Goetz co-organized two special sessions at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). The first session, titled "Land Grant Universities and Rural Development: Are We Using All the Tools in Our Toolboxes?" provided a forum to reflect on the Land Grant system's institutional capacity to support human capital and cultivate economic opportunity over the nation's vast rural expanse. The second, "Implications for Agricultural Economists of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2017 (HR 4174)," explored the research opportunities related to HR 4147. In addition, Postdoctoral Researcher Yicheol Han presented at AAEA on "Modeling the Local Input-Output Network using County-Level Production and Consumption Estimates, and National Input-Output Table."
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Arbogast, Douglas, Daniel Eades, Heather Manzo, Stephan J. Goetz, and Yicheol Han. Tourism and Extension: Current Snapshot and Future Opportunity. presented at the National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals, Cleveland, OH, June 12, 2018.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Goetz, Stephan J. Trends, Issues and Opportunities for Northeast Land-Grant Universities at the Rural-Urban Fringe. presented at the 2018 Northeast Joint Summer Session of NERA and NEED, Bethany Beach, DE, June 6, 2018.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Liang, Jiaochen, and Stephan J. Goetz. Technology Intensity and Agglomeration Economies. Research Policy, July 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.07.006.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Swayne, Matt. Investing in Public Education Earns High Marks for Greater Upward Mobility. Penn State News, March 28, 2018.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Swayne, Matt. Weather Patterns, Farm Income, Other Factors, May Be Influencing Opioid Crisis. Penn State News, January 24, 2018.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Tian, Zheng, and Stephan J Goetz. Measuring Industry Co-Location across County Borders. presented at the Southern Regional Science Meetings, Philadelphia, PA, March 15, 2018.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Tian, Zheng, and Stephan J Goetz. Measuring Industry Co-Location across County Borders. presented at the Regional Science Association Global Conference in China, Beijing, China, July 1, 2018.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Tian, Zheng, Stephan J Goetz, and Timothy W. Slaper. Predicting the State-Level Gross Job Gains and Losses with Google Trends Data. presented at the Southern Regional Science Meetings, Philadelphia, PA, March 15, 2018.
|
|