IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/apecpp/v39y2017i1p65-86..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

State-Level Cooperative Extension Spending and Farmer Exits

Author

Listed:
  • Stephan J. Goetz
  • Meri Davlasheridze

Abstract

Numerous studies have evaluated the impact of Extension on farm productivity and related outcomes. Here we use annual data from 1983 to 2010 covering the 50 U.S. states to examine the impact of Extension on net changes in the number of farmers. The historical transition of farmers out of U.S. agriculture raises the question of whether Cooperative Extension and underlying Hatch-funded research spending keeps farmers in agriculture or accelerates their exit. On balance, nearly 500,000 more farmers left than entered agriculture over the period studied. We estimate that without Extension, as many as 137,700 (or 28%) additional farmers would have disappeared on net. Overall, Extension programs are a remarkably cost effective way of keeping farmers in agriculture. Alternatively, shifting just 1.5% of federal farm program payments to Extension would have reduced net exits over this period by an estimated 11%, or 55,000 farmers.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephan J. Goetz & Meri Davlasheridze, 2017. "State-Level Cooperative Extension Spending and Farmer Exits," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 39(1), pages 65-86.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:apecpp:v:39:y:2017:i:1:p:65-86.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aepp/ppw007
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dimitri, Carolyn & Effland, Anne & Conklin, Neilson C., 2005. "The 20th Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy," Economic Information Bulletin 59390, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    2. Sands, Ronald & Jones, Carol & Marshall, Elizabeth P., 2014. "Global Drivers of Agricultural Demand and Supply," Economic Research Report 186137, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    3. Alessandro Olper & Valentina Raimondi & Daniele Cavicchioli & Mauro Vigani, 2014. "Do CAP payments reduce farm labour migration? A panel data analysis across EU regions," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 41(5), pages 843-873.
    4. Harris, John R & Todaro, Michael P, 1970. "Migration, Unemployment & Development: A Two-Sector Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 126-142, March.
    5. Evenson, Robert E., 2001. "Economic impacts of agricultural research and extension," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: B. L. Gardner & G. C. Rausser (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 573-628, Elsevier.
    6. Julian M. Alston & Philip G. Pardey, 2014. "Agriculture in the Global Economy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 121-146, Winter.
    7. Alston, Julian M. & Pardey, Philip G., 2009. "Theme Overview: Agricultural Productivity and Global Food Security in the Long Run," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 24(4), pages 1-4.
    8. Wang, Sun Ling, 2014. "Cooperative Extension System: Trends and Economic Impacts on U.S. Agriculture," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 29(1), pages 1-8.
    9. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    10. Timothy Dunne & J. Bradford Jensen & Mark J. Roberts, 2009. "Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number dunn05-1, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hemond, Olivia & Butsic, Van & Moanga, Diana & Wartenberg, Ariani C., 2023. "Farm consolidation and turnover dynamics linked to increased crop diversity and higher agricultural input use," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    2. Brenna Ellison & Nicholas D Paulson & Mykel R Taylor & Glynn T Tonsor & Jonathan Coppess & Gary D Schnitkey, 2017. "Evaluation of Educational Offerings Associated with the 2014 Farm Bill," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 39(4), pages 547-558.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Seidu, Ayuba & Onel, Gulcan & Moss, Charles Britt, 2018. "Impact of International Remittance on Out-Farm Labor Migration in Developing Countries: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis," 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida 266531, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    2. Emilie Caldeira & Martial Foucault & Gregoire Rota-Graziosi, 2015. "Decentralization in Africa and the nature of local governments’ competition: evidence from Benin," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(6), pages 1048-1076, December.
    3. Peter Warr, 2022. "Research and productivity in Indonesian agriculture," Departmental Working Papers 2022-02, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    4. Danilo Bertoni & Daniele Cavicchioli & Franco Donzelli & Giovanni Ferrazzi & Dario G. Frisio & Roberto Pretolani & Elena Claire Ricci & Vera Ventura, 2018. "Recent Contributions of Agricultural Economics Research in the Field of Sustainable Development," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-20, December.
    5. William F. Lincoln & Andrew H. McCallum & Michael Siemer, 2017. "The Great Recession and a Missing Generation of Exporters," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-108, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Iara, Anna & Traistaru, Iulia, 2004. "How flexible are wages in EU accession countries?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 431-450, August.
    7. Timo Mitze & Torben Schmidt, 2015. "Internal migration, regional labor markets and the role of agglomeration economies," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 55(1), pages 61-101, October.
    8. Lee, Seung Jung & Stebunovs, Viktors, 2016. "Bank capital pressures, loan substitutability, and nonfinancial employment," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 44-69.
    9. Herbert Brücker & Elke J. Jahn, 2011. "Migration and Wage‐setting: Reassessing the Labor Market Effects of Migration," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 113(2), pages 286-317, June.
    10. Boeri, Tito & Brücker, Herbert, 2005. "Migration, Co-ordination Failures and EU Enlargement," IZA Discussion Papers 1600, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Brücker, Herbert & Siliverstovs, Boriss, 2006. "Estimating and forecasting European migration : methods, problems and results," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 39(1), pages 35-56.
    12. Hassan, Md. Fuad & Kornher, Lukas, 2020. "Is mechanization in agriculture curse or blessing for the rural labor market in Bangladesh?," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304543, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    13. Bell, Brian & Nickell, Stephen & Quintini, Glenda, 2002. "Wage equations, wage curves and all that," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 341-360, July.
    14. Kari Hämäläinen & Petri Böckerman, 2004. "Regional Labor Market Dynamics, Housing, and Migration," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 543-568, August.
    15. Mitze, Timo & Reinkowski, Janina, 2010. "Testing the Validity of the Neoclassical Migration Model: Overall and Age-Group Specific Estimation Results for German Spatial Planning Regions," MPRA Paper 23616, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Karsten Albæk & Rita Asplund & Stig Blomskog & Erling Barth & Björn Rúnar Guðmundsson & Vifill Karlsson & Erik Strøjer Madsen, 1999. "Dimensions of the Wage-Unemployment Relationship in the Nordic Countries: Wage Flexibility without Wage Curves," Discussion Papers 99-24, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    17. William Lincoln & Andrew McCallum & Michael Siemer, 2018. "The Great Recession and a Missing Generation of Exporters," 2018 Meeting Papers 558, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Varun Kumar Das & A. Ganesh-Kumar, 2019. "Off-the-farm livelihood choice of farm households in India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2019-032, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    19. Iacovone, Leonardo & Rauch, Ferdinand & Winters, L. Alan, 2013. "Trade as an engine of creative destruction: Mexican experience with Chinese competition," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 379-392.
    20. Chatterjee, Diti & Dinar, Ariel & González-Rivera, Gloria, 2018. "An empirical knowledge production function of agricultural research and extension: The case of the University of California Cooperative Extension," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 290-297.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cooperative extension; farm survival; federal farm subsidies; Hatch Act; job retention; productivity; Smith-Lever Act;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q16 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - R&D; Agricultural Technology; Biofuels; Agricultural Extension Services
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:apecpp:v:39:y:2017:i:1:p:65-86.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.