NERCRD in the News

West Virginia town with people enjoying a bike path and creek.

WVU Extension leads efforts to enhance sustainability of tourism in rural communities

July 8, 2026

This article by Hannah Booth (West Virginia University Division for Land-Grant Engagement) highlights the Tourism, Resiliency and Indicators for Post-Pandemic Planning (TRIP) project and a recently published study by the TRIP project team. NERCRD Director Stephan Goetz, Associate Director Stephen Alessi, and Faculty Affiliate Luyi Han are members of the project team. The TRIP project is led by WVU’s Doug Arbogast, who is also a member of the NERCRD Technical Advisory Committee.

News and Events

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If you’re looking for past or future events in the NERCRD webinar series, visit: https://nercrd.psu.edu/tag/webinar/.

three people posing for a photo together

NERCRD honored with National Extension Tourism Partner Award

November 21, 2023

The award, given by the National Extension Tourism (NET) Design Team at its biennial conference in September, recognized the NERCRD for its contributions that have made a significant positive impact on the NET organization, including support of a strategic planning process and partnership on a project-accelerator grant.

booklet cover with large photo of farmland

International Workshop on Agritourism 2022 Proceedings now available online

August 8, 2023

The International Workshop on Agritourism (IWA) 2022 Conference Proceedings is now available online. The publication is intended to increase access to the scholarship that was shared during the three-day conference, which was hosted by University of Vermont Extension in Burlington, Vermont, USA, on August 30 – September 1, 2022. It contains 27 peer-reviewed papers, which are grouped into nine topic areas. It was published jointly by the National Extension Tourism Network and the Global Agritourism Network, with support from the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development.

group of professionals with laptops gathered at large table

Digital divide hinders rural innovation, study shows

June 9, 2023

Cloud-based computing directly contributes to business innovation, but rural businesses lacking sufficient broadband capacity to access cloud services are missing out on their innovation-boosting potential, according to a team of researchers from NERCRD and the National Science Foundation. The findings can be used by policymakers and business-support organizations to foster greater opportunities for rural innovation.

Agritourism and direct sales fact sheets for all 50 US states

June 2, 2023

A new set of fact sheets provides comprehensive insights into the demographics of U.S. farms that offer agritourism activities or sell food directly to consumers or both. The fact sheets are available for all 50 states and are intended to help local decision makers, farmers, and the organizations that support them in their efforts to strengthen and expand agritourism enterprises.

Opening farms to visitors boosts nearby farms’ direct sales, and vice versa

April 19, 2023

Farmers use many marketing strategies to diversify their incomes and stay in business. New research led by NERCRD Faculty Affiliate, Claudia Schmidt, suggests that two of these strategies—agritourism and direct farm sales—complement one another when they occur within the same community. The findings could help farmers and the local organizations that support them plan strategically for farm resilience and growth.

RRDCs release findings from National Listening Sessions on Rural Community, Economic, and Workforce Development

February 27, 2023

Today the nation’s four Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDCs) are releasing their findings from a comprehensive initiative aimed at identifying the critical investments needed to build community capacity and improve quality of life in rural America. Their report, Investing in Rural Capacity: Comprehensive Summary of National Rural Development Stakeholder Listening Sessions, can be used by a broad audience of practitioners, decision makers, and government agencies to inform where programmatic efforts and resources may be most effective in tackling key issues facing rural communities.

team members posing for photo in stairwell

Catching up with Pennsylvania’s Coming Together for Racial Understanding Team

December 6, 2022

The team discussed how they adapted the Coming Together curriculum for Penn State Extension, the reach and impacts of their work thus far, and their plans for taking it to a wider audience.

Schmidt receives Roy C. Buck Award for paper on women farmers in the United States

November 16, 2022

Claudia Schmidt, assistant professor of marketing and local/regional food systems Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and NERCRD faculty affiliate, is the recipient of the college’s 2022 Roy C. Buck Faculty Award, which recognizes the best article accepted or published by a refereed scholarly journal in the social sciences within the past two years.

conference attendees gathered in venue lobby

International Workshop on Agritourism draws visitors from around the world to the Northeast

September 11, 2022

More than 500 people from 56 countries gathered in-person and virtually for the International Workshop on Agritourism (IWA), hosted by University of Vermont Extension in Burlington, VT, August 30-September 1.

Using tweets to predict real-time food shortages

April 12, 2022

The sentiments and emotions expressed in tweets on Twitter can be used in real time to assess where supply chain disruptions due to a pandemic, war or natural disaster may lead to food shortages, according to researchers at NERCRD, Penn State and the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar.

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