Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
Agricultural, Food, & Resource Economics
Non Technical Summary
Sociological and Technical Change: The project will use unpublished government data to explore how to best identify new opportunities in rural communities.Community Institutions: The project will analyze already-collected survey data to better understand where and why mental illness rates are different from one place to the next.Agricultural Economics and Rural Communities: The project will use an already collected data set to analyze rural firm innovation behavior and compare it to urban firms.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
70%
Applied
30%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The mission of MSU AgBioResearch is to engage in innovative, leading-edge research that combines scientific expertise with practical experience to generate economic prosperity, sustain natural resources and enhance the quality of life in Michigan, the nation and the world. (From AgBioResearch web site; boldface added.)Rural America produces a bounty for the world, but is facing tremendous challenges in the current era. To note just a few, the workforce is aging, worker shortages are appearing, rural hospitals are closing, farm operators are aging, regional retail and service hubs are shrinking, and drug addiction rates are increasing. A brief "rural renaissance" experienced a few years ago, fueled by a commodity boom, seems to have slowed. There is increasing pressure to trim a federal budget that has long subsidized rural infrastructure under the USDA umbrella. To continue to be viable as a place for living and working, rural areas must adapt.Technical change is one way for rural areas to adapt. To take just one example, over the next five years, high speed internet access will likely become universally available. To date, internet seems to have accelerated rural decline, rather than signaling the "end of distance" promised at the dawn of the internet era. However the gig economy that is emerging may lend itself better to tapping historic rural ingenuity and entrepreneurship than the current employer-based model for individuals' careers. Can higher speed internet make rural areas more viable by changing the way goods and services are delivered, and helping producers stay competitive, or will it just be "one more nail in the coffin" as more rural enterprises fall to increased competition from elsewhere? Will the sense of community that sustains commitment to rural places fall by the wayside or be strengthened?This research aims to better understand forces driving change in rural America, and to study and develop mechanisms for change. The research has three inter-related subareas. The PI is implementing four current grants that relate directly to the three themes. The USDA is funding or administering all four grants, so the relevance of the three themes to the USDA mission is without question.Sociological and Technological Change Affecting Individuals, Families, and Communities. (USDA Knowledge Area 803). This component of the research involves tracking emerging national and worldwide trends and testing hypotheses about how they play out in rural America. Understanding trends will help local, state, and national policy makers understand the context in which they operate, and identify emerging economic opportunities and threats. Of particular interest is how the changes affect the rural workforce and job opportunities.Community Institutions, Health and Social Services (USDA Knowledge Area 805). The health care sector is one of the largest in rural America, and many of the jobs pay well. In particular, the research will focus on the economics of community health outcomes and the interaction of health and agriculture. Health policy has become a key national issue, but understanding how it is or can play out differently in rural areas is not well understood. With closing rural health care facilities, aging rural population, rising costs, and an uncertain political environment, health policy is likely to become a key issue over the next five years. Furthermore, the current incentives in the system may be creating inefficiencies in agricultural production, as families move resources out of managing the farm enterprise and into formal employment (with health insurance) in an effort to minimize their health care risk. Technology is an element of this as well, as farmers may be able to innovate their way out of some health risks through new methods that expose fewer people to less risky working conditions, ultimately reducing health care/insurance costs. Finally, there is emerging concern over substance abuse and mental health in rural America. The research will explore these issues.Agricultural Economics and Rural Communities (USDA Knowledge areas 601--ag production, and 610--domestic policy). The future competiveness and job opportunities in rural America depend in large measure on technology adoption. In particular, the research will focus on institutional mechanisms to enhance technology adoption in agriculture and rural development. A historical strength of rural America has been its ability to efficiently produce goods, especially food, with low labor inputs. With growing rural workforce shortages and complexities of the food system, new technologies are needed. The USDA and the Land Grant system partner to produce new technologies, but systems for connecting research outputs with end users need to be assessed for their effectiveness under the changing environment. New ways of connecting biophysical researchers with rural and agricultural firms will be piloted and evaluated.
Project Methods
Sociological and Technological Change Affecting Individuals, Families, and Communities. The main focus over the next several years will be rural opportunity mapping. This is often done via threshold analysis, a statistical technique to assess preconditions that predict presence of a certain type of firm. While threshold analysis often focuses on retail trade analysis (Chakraborty 2012), the data set available from the Texas A&M Federal Statistical Research Data Center allows us to increase the accuracy of retail estimates, but also opens the possibility of extending it beyond service sectors. Our approach will update econometric methods used by prior authors to make estimates. Within the FSRDC, we will analyze and match raw data from a variety of Federal sources including IRS and Census. The access to unrestricted (raw) data instead of the ranges that are typically published should improve accuracy of estimated thresholds. The work starts with virtual focus groups of service providers (primarily extension educators) working with home-based businesses, rural retailers, and value-added agricultural activities. We will use these key informant sessions to inform choices of variables to include in our econometric analysis.Community Institutions, Health and Social Services. The main focus over the rest of the current grants will be to finalize analysis of national surveys (general population behavioral health and farmer health insurance) that are complete. Analysis methods will be econometric using standard techniques. If national policy evolves quickly, there may be a need to seek additional funds to mount more surveys.Agricultural Economics and Rural Communities. Research procedures in this area will involve: A) case studies of successful and unsuccessful matches between Land Grant biophysical researchers and rural firms; and B) econometric analysis of the rural innovation process. In the latter, analysis will embrace USDA's Economic Research Service national survey of firm innovation (10,000 firms). Access to the raw data is available through a secure link. The ERS firm-level survey data will be linked to other community-level data to complement the analysis.