Food Systems, Nutrition Security, and Agriculture

International Workshop on Agritourism 2022 Conference Proceedings

The International Workshop on Agritourism (IWA) 2022 Conference Proceedings 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. NERCRD staff provided editorial, project management, and graphic design support to this effort.

Authors: Edited by Lisa Chase, Chadley Hollas, Xinyi Qian, and Claire Whitehouse

Publication: Published jointly by the National Extension Tourism Network and the Global Agritourism Network, with support from the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development Date Published: July 13, 2023

Tags: agritourism, NET, proceedings

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Agritourism and Direct Sales Clusters in the United States

Agritourism and direct-to-consumer sales are increasingly used as diversification strategies to generate additional farm revenue streams. Yet despite their growing importance, the impacts, interactions, and adoption of these strategies remain poorly understood. Here we use univariate and bivariate local Moran’s I statistics to identify agritourism and direct-to-consumer sales hotspots in the United States and a Seemingly-Unrelated-Regression Spatial Durbin Model to examine the association between agritourism and direct farm sales to consumers. We find that agritourism and direct sales reinforce each other within the same county but not consistently across neighboring counties.

Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Zheng Tian, Lisa Chase, Chadley Hollas and Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: Agricultural and Resource Economics Review Date Published: April 17, 2023

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Linking research and practice: The role of Extension on agritourism development in the U.S.

Agritourism is a critical farm diversification strategy for farmers to enhance income and profit potential with benefits related to rural community development, increased awareness of sustainability practices, and local heritage preservation. For rural community and economic development professionals, agritourism has become an important strategy to develop local tourism, grow small businesses, and enhance regional economic diversification. We propose that the agritourism ecosystem would arguably benefit from more robust Extension programming and network development. A discussion of two state case studies, Vermont and California, provides an overview of the critical elements necessary to build a statewide agritourism program. The role of Extension in rural development and tourism underscores the opportunity to utilize agritourism as a broader development strategy. Finally, we make recommendations for growing the role of Extension in agritourism. More robust training and education for Extension professionals, stronger connections to state tourism departments, and more robust advocacy with university and state-level decision makers on the value of agritourism investments are all highlighted as crucial next steps.

Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Lisa Chase, Carla Barbieri, Ellie Rilla, Doolarie Singh Knights, Dawn Thilmany, Stacy Tomas, Lori Dickes, Sarah Cornelisse, R. David Lamie, Rachael Callahan, Holly George, and Penny Leff

Publication: Applied Economics Teaching Resources Date Published: July 1, 2022

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Facility locations in the fresh produce supply chain: An integration of optimization and empirical methods

Facility locations are crucial determinants of supply chain efficiency for aggregating and distributing products. The multi-disciplinary nature of the facility location problem requires multiple complementary approaches, at different levels of aggregation, to accommodate the salient features of location determinants. This study examines the facility location problem for the U.S. fresh produce supply chain. We present a model that incorporates an empirical scenario into a facility location problem in order to capture much of the information required to make an optimal location decision. Our results suggest that the reliability of facility locations can be improved without significantly increasing the operating costs. This study sheds light on how the application of complementary modeling approaches improves the effectiveness of facility location solutions.

Authors: Houtian Ge, Stephan J. Goetz, Rebecca Cleary, Jing Yi, Miguel Gómez

Publication: International Journal of Production Economics Date Published: July 1, 2022

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Food Insufficiency and Twitter Emotions During a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic initially caused worldwide concerns about food insecurity. Tweets analyzed in real-time may help food assistance providers target food supplies to where they are most urgently needed. In this exploratory study, we use natural language processing to extract sentiments and emotions expressed in food security-related tweets early in the pandemic in U.S. states. The emotion joy dominated in these tweets nationally, but only anger, disgust, and fear were also statistically correlated with contemporaneous food insufficiency rates reported in the Household Pulse Survey; more nuanced and statistically stronger correlations are detected within states, including a negative correlation with joy.

Authors: Stephan J. Goetz, Connor Heaton, Muhammad Imran, Yuxuan Pan, Zheng Tian, Claudia Schmidt, Umair Qazi, Ferda Ofli, and Prasenjit Mitra

Publication: Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy Date Published: April 3, 2022

Tags: COVID-19

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The Role of Community Food Services in Reducing U.S. Food Insufficiency in the COVID-19 Pandemic

We use state-level Census Household Pulse Survey data to examine the role of community food
services such as food banks and pantries in reducing food insufficiency during the COVID-19
pandemic in the United States. Food insufficiency increased for all income classes during the
pandemic, and especially for the lower and middle classes. We adopt a fixed effects filtered
estimator to estimate the coefficients on time-invariant regressors in a fixed effects panel model.
Estimation results suggest community food services contribute to mitigating food insufficiency,
especially for the middle class and in the early months of the pandemic.

Authors: Zheng Tian, Claudia Schmidt, Stephan J Goetz

Publication: Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics Date Published: October 1, 2021

Tags: COVID-19

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The Conversation: More Americans couldn’t get enough to eat in 2020 – a change that hit the middle class hardest

Americans in households with annual incomes from $50,000 to $75,000 experienced the sharpest increase in food insufficiency when the COVID-19 pandemic began – meaning that many people in the middle class didn’t have enough to eat at some point within the previous seven days, according to our peer-reviewed study that will soon be published in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Authors: Zheng Tian, Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: The Conversation Date Published: September 23, 2021

Tags: COVID-19

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Data Report: U.S. Household Food Insufficiency Falls Below Pre-Pandemic Level

NERCRD COVID-19 Data Report 21-02: This data brief was released in September 2021, and focuses on U.S. food insufficiency rates at that time, relative to food insufficiency rates before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. food insufficiency rates have fallen to levels below those in the year prior to the pandemic.

Authors: Stephan J. Goetz, Yuxuan Pan, Jason Entsminger, Zheng Tian

Publication: NERCRD, Penn State University Date Published: September 8, 2021

Tags: COVID-19, COVID-19 Data Briefs

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Female farmers in the United States: Research needs and policy questions

The literature on women in agricultural production in developing countries is vast. While female farmers in the United States have recently received more attention, their general characteristics and practices pursued have not received as much consideration by agricultural economists. Here we examine U.S. female farmers’ characteristics and factors associated with county level female farm shares using Census data. We find that these shares are higher near metropolitan core counties and that their presence is associated with agritourism activity as well as horticultural and small livestock production. We conclude with several policy questions and future research needed to assess the roles and impacts of female farm operators in the U.S.

Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Stephan J. Goetz, Zheng Tian

Publication: Science Direct Date Published: May 1, 2021

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Data Brief: Pennsylvania Food Insufficiency Reached New High at the End of 2020

NERCRD Covid-19 Data Report 21-01: The share of Pennsylvania households in which hunger is a problem has increased to the highest rate since the data were first collected at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey, the share of adults in households where there was either sometimes or often not enough to eat in the last seven days reached a new high of 12.7% on December 19, 2020, just slightly below the national rate on that day (12.9%). In this report we also show how families have adapted to this crisis by accessing free food and how households with different incomes have been affected by rising food insecurity.

Authors: Stephan J. Goetz; Zheng Tian; Claudia Schmidt; Yuxuan Pan

Publication: NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief Series Date Published: February 12, 2021

Tags: COVID-19, COVID-19 Data Briefs

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