Federal Economic Data on Local and Regional Food Producers
AAEA members and Past President release research in JAAEA
The USDA has been funding many projects related to strengthening local and regional food supply chains. New research released in the Journal of the Agricutural & Applied Economics Association will help all researchers in this field to better understand the available Federal data available for local and regional food research and its many nuances. This will enable the USDA to better understand the needs and implications for this funding.
Allison Bauman, Becca Jablonski, Lauren Chenarides, and Dawn Thilmany from Colorado State University and D. Adeline Yeh from the USDA – Economic Research Service, review the three national surveys that provide farm-level data on sales through local and regional food systems, including how questions have changed over time in the article “Federal Economic Data on Local and Regional Food Producers.”
The authors say, “Support for local and regional food systems continues to grow and mature, and Congress has provided guidance and funding for USDA agencies to increase data availability to understand the economic and business management implications of the sector. This paper provides researchers, USDA staff, and others with information to conduct comprehensive analyses on local and regional food systems using the Census of Agriculture, Agricultural Resource Management Survey, and Local Food Marketing Practices Survey, focusing on which statistics can be compared over time and across surveys and which cannot. We hope that our recommendations are useful to the USDA as it continues to improve its survey instruments so that researchers can more easily and convincingly investigate the ways in which sales through local food markets affect farm profitability and viability, thus providing sound data and evidence to practitioners and informing recommendations to policymakers.”
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ABOUT AAEA: Established in 1910, the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is the leading professional association for agricultural and applied economists, with 2,500 members in more than 60 countries. Members of the AAEA work in academic or government institutions as well as in industry and not-for-profit organizations, and engage in a variety of research, teaching, and outreach activities in the areas of agriculture, the environment, food, health, and international development. The AAEA publishes three journals, the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (an open access journal), the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, as well as the online magazine Choices and the online open access publication series Applied Economics Teaching Resources. To learn more, visit www.aaea.org.
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