The NE1749 group (Enhancing Rural Economic Opportunities, Community Resilience, and Entrepreneurship) formally requests consideration for a revision/replacement as its five-year term ends. The group is in its fifth incarnation (previously NE1049, NE1029, NE1011, and NE162), and was originally organized prior to the establishment of the new NIFA focus areas. This project will continue to improve the group’s efforts by extending and expanding previous areas of collaborative research, while also exploring new and understudied issues facing rural areas.

Overview

Rural communities are diverse, with some rural areas doing well and others facing a wide variety of barriers to economic development (Goetz et al. 2018). Some rural areas are dominated by agriculture, while others are more integrated with urban areas or feature natural resource development or outdoor recreation. The diversity of rural challenges and assets means that research to enhance rural economic development cover a number of interacting and overlapping topics. While entrepreneurship, equity, housing, and health, are of course all overlapping to some degree, to provide structure to our areas of focus, we group the objectives into “housing and health” and “entrepreneurship and equity,” within a unifying/overarching theme of “sustainable and inclusive” rural economic development. See figure 1 for an illustration.

Figure 1. Overlap of Focus Areas of this Proposal (see attachments)

Over the five-year terms of the past project (NE1749), aging population, changing industrial structure, and less consistent health care and public service provision were a focus, with many rural areas have continued to experience unsustainable population loss, particularly among young adults, but also with decreasing births. These trends have largely continued and populations with large shares of old, poor, or people of color have different needs for medical care, legal assistance, and social services, yet depopulating rural communities that lack amenities and quality schools and health care struggle to attract highly educated individuals to provide those professional services. The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the limitations of rural healthcare and risks of unhealthy behavior, with many rural communities facing high per capita rates of COVID-19 infection and mortality.

Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic also highlights some areas for rural economic opportunity and population sustainability. Specifically, with increasing work location flexibility for many individuals and some viewing population density as a health risk, many rural areas experience booms of new residents, including highly educated individuals who could work remotely. Furthermore, many rural areas over the same period already had increasing population bases that were increasingly diverse. Specifically, rural areas are increasingly diverse, as jobs in construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and food processing brought an influx of immigrants. Are there opportunities to leverage this increasingly diverse population to enhance economic growth? How do we ensure rural economic development is inclusive to enhance immigrant equity? Are there historical sources of rural racial and ethnic inequality that can be measured or addressed?

Overlapping with issues of both healthcare and economic growth, U.S. military veterans are disproportionately represented in both rural areas and among rural entrepreneurs. Since 36 percent of veterans who use the Veteran’s Administration (VA) for health care live in rural areas, healthcare again poses a challenge. However, these veterans could also be an important resource for rural communities, bringing education, skills, and leadership experience. Are there opportunities to leverage veterans’ experiences to enhance rural economic growth? How can rural communities support rural veteran entrepreneurs and rural veterans in the workforce more generally?

In sum, considering rural health, causes of death including suicide, alcohol abuse, and drug (especially opioid) overdoses are relatively prevalent in rural communities. Disadvantages prevalent in rural areas related to low education levels, housing shortages, unemployment, poverty, age, mental and physical health, and isolation all combine to increase rural mortality and reduce life expectancy (Community Resilience Estimates, U.S. Census Bureau, 2021).

USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics (REE) Action Plan Progress Report (November, 2017; see also USDA Strategic Plan FY 2018 – 2022) presents a vision to support rural communities by using “Impact-driven agricultural science” to expand rural economic opportunity through innovation, promotion of sustainability and conservation, enhancing environmental quality, and improving quality of life for farmers, farm workers, and society. Of the seven goals identified in the REE plan and discussed in the progress report, five are relevant to the new proposal, along with their underlying issues and broadly defined research questions:

1. Nutrition and Childhood Obesity. As noted above, the costs of poor health and nutrition are extensive in rural areas. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of enhancing rural health and nutrition. Poor food environments in rural communities have led to the low quality of nutrition and nutrition-related disease. How can we effectively enhance rural health, healthcare, food environment, and nutrition?


2. Responding to Climate and Energy Needs. Rural areas encounter a lower-carbon future and regional energy security. Everyone needs tools to help with greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation, and this is especially true for agricultural and forestry producers, land managers, and other rural decision makers, who are having to deal with increasing temperatures and/or increasing climatic turbulence. Also, rural communities should have reliable and affordable access to energy systems and sources in the face of extreme weather events. What approaches can communities and community-members take to enhance rural climate resiliency?


3. Rural-Urban Interdependence and Prosperity. Some rural communities have been able to take advantage of new economic opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic by telework and distance education on a large scale and accelerated e-commerce. Many others, however, have continued to experience out-migration, stagnant labor markets, poverty, housing shortages, and/or declining healthcare availability. Communities will need to leverage diverse community members and entrepreneurs to exploit and grow their competitive advantages, including resources, skills, knowledge, and innovation, all of which are key to enhanced economic resiliency. Further, rural communities need to position themselves to take advantage of opportunities (e.g., local/regional/organic food supply chain, and new immigrants) and technologies (e.g., broadband, green technologies, and renewable energies). How do these constellations of factors interact to establish determinants of long-run rural economic opportunity?


4. Sustainable Use of Natural Resources. Rural areas are disproportionately endowed with natural resources. These resources often require disparate prescriptions for sustainable use that still maximizes long-run economic growth, while also following the water-rights of Native Americans. How do we leverage these resources to maximize sustainable economic growth?


5. Education and Science Literacy. Maintaining and growing rural economic opportunity will require increasing understanding and investments in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) to enhance the competitiveness of the rural labor force, particularly for young people who often leave rural areas for better social and career options. What are the most effective investments in STEAM for long-run rural economic opportunity?

Overlapping with the goals outlined in the REE Action Plan Progress Report, is the White House’s plan to “Fundamentally Revitalize Rural Economies.” Specifically, the plan emphasizes the need for sustainable rural economic development by investing in their unique assets to “make sure wealth created in rural America stays in rural America.” Consistent with the needs and justification of this group, strategic goals listed in this plan include: fostering the development of regional food systems, partnering with farmers to reduce greenhouse emissions in agriculture and rural energy, effectively invest in rural broadband infrastructure, improve access to health care in rural communities, and prioritize persistent poverty communities for long-run economic growth. As the plan notes, approximately 85% of counties experiencing long-term persistent poverty in the U.S. are rural.

Recent and ongoing projects in these areas by the members of NE1749 include research related to local foods and sustainable agriculture, rural water and environmental issues, rural amenities and economic growth and development, rural housing shortages, agricultural tourism and recreation, rural access to information technology, links between broadband provision and entrepreneurship, rural military veteran and entrepreneurship, and long-run rural economic opportunity and causes rural racial inequity. Recent research has also examined rural-urban linkages, the impacts of the opioid crisis, and causes of rural population loss. In its 2021 annual meeting, the group identified these topics and linked them to the REE and Whitehouse goals for supporting rural economic development. Pursuant to developing the next iteration of the research project, we emphasize that while many of these areas remain similar to previous iterations of this group, these research topics are ongoing (hence their inclusion in new Whitehouse goals), and regional heterogeneity in rural needs and effective policy continue to uniquely evolve. For example, changes in rural labor market continue, due partly to declining and aging population and increasing diversity, may cause substantial shifts in long-run rural economic opportunity. In terms of rural climate resiliency, development of renewable energy sources like wind and solar also have the potential to cause changes in land use and economic structure in rural areas.

The researchers acknowledge that this proposal is exceptionally broad and multi-faceted, but so too are the evolving needs of rural economic development. The members of this multi-state research group are uniquely qualified to continue to provide collaborative leadership in the pursuit of the long-run rural economic development goals set out by USDA and the Whitehouse.