Economic Impact of Beginning Farmers

  • Download the Sept 30 Session Presentations (all in PDF format):
  1. How economic data has been used to generate investment
  2. Do Local Food firms matter?
  • What data is needed and how do you collect it?
  • Costs of survey methods
  • Building a team
  • Conner, D.S., W.A. Knudson, M.W. Hamm, and C. Peterson. 2008. The Food System as an Economic Driver: Strategies and Applications for Michigan. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 3(4):371-383.
  • Swenson, D. 2006. The Economic Impacts of Increased Fruit and Vegetable Production and Consumption in Iowa. Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University. http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/leopold_pubspapers/77/.
  • Cantrell P., D.S. Conner, G. Erikcek, M.W. Hamm. 2006. Eat Fresh Grow Jobs, Michigan. Michigan Land Institute. http://mlui.org/downloads/EatFresh.pdf.
  1. What works for you and what hasn’t been covered?
  2. What if the data does not tell the story you want, are there inherent risks in this analysis?  How can you manage that risk?
  3. The group’s answers to questions like “why is this important?” “what do we need to know?” and “what do we need to demonstrate?”