We present an adjusted bid price mechanism that incorporates economic multiplier effects in public food procurement decision making. Under Input–Output model assumptions, the algorithm estimates enhanced tax revenues to state governments through multiplier effects associated with in‐state supplier purchasing. The deduction of tax revenues represents the net cost of food procurement for the state and enables agencies to make well‐informed purchasing decisions. We estimate the extent of cost reductions for food product categories based on detailed purchase data from public agencies in New York and demonstrate how the algorithm can be used as an improvement to geographic preference bid procedures.

Farm-to-school projects have been widely supported by policy makers with funding provided at state and federal levels. Still, many of the outcomes of this inflow of policy and funding remain unclear, often due to insufficient data to examine them. In 2018, New York State (USA) announced the 30% NY Initiative that substantially increases school lunch reimbursements if school districts purchase at least 30% of their ingredients as New York food products. With detailed food purchasing data from the second largest school district in the state and the largest to qualify for enhanced reimbursement, we estimate the gross and net economic impacts of the policy through a customized input-output model. We observe clear shifts in food spending categories that suggest changes in what and where foods were purchased. Results demonstrate net positive value added impacts of the policy even when a negative impact is applied to account for the cost of the policy to taxpayers. For every dollar in gross domestic product lost in the state to support the program, $1.06 of gross domestic product is expected to be added. However, the results are only true to the extent that the increase in local food spending is commensurate with an expansion of the related farm and food product industries to meet that demand. Specifically, at least 67% of the growth in local food spending must contribute to new aggregate demand for the related food product industries, rather than reallocation from other local marketing channels.

Sustainable community development relies on cumulative investments in a broad range of capital assets, yet little research sets forth comprehensive measures of their stocks or the relationships of capital assets to community outcomes. Building off conceptual frameworks for wealth creation, we develop a comprehensive set of indicators associated with stocks of community-based wealth at the county level. Including such indicators when evaluating community outcomes addresses a missing-variables problem of prior efforts and allows one to control for and quantify the importance of community capital assets in concert with traditional modeling efforts. To illustrate their use, we evaluate the association between the percentage of farms selling through direct-to-consumer channels and community capital stocks for both metro and nonmetro counties, capturing direct and indirect spillovers. Our results demonstrate clear differences in the association of capital stocks and the percentage of farms’ direct-to-consumer channel adoption across counties classified as metro and nonmetro (and their adjacency to metro counties), suggesting that the success of food system interventions, policies, and strategies for local economic development may hinge on the preexisting levels of community capitals and/or the need for planners to develop them further.

The existence of cooperative organizations in today's business environment, particularly in agriculture, signals their continued ability to provide value to their member owners. However, due largely to data limitations, we know very little about the monetary value of ownership held by members and how value changes across members of differing characteristics. Through a discrete choice experiment with more than 200 dairy farmers in the United States, we examine these issues explicitly for dairy marketing cooperatives that purchase their members' milk and process it into finished dairy products. Results suggest that dairy farmers, on aggregate, are willing to accept lower per hundredweight compensation, 2.3% of the average milk price, to be cooperative members relative to selling to independent handlers. Results also suggest dairy farmers actively consider the industry wide impacts within pricing offers on preferences for other milk pricing attributes. The inclusion of demographic covariates highlights preferences important to understanding heterogeneous member interests and, thus, informing improved cooperative governance strategies and board decision making to address them.

Sufficient access to and utilization of broadband is an ongoing concern for rural economic development. Using a rural region in Northern New York (USA), we consider the investment and operational costs of a broadband cooperative and determine service prices for which it is financially viable. Service prices need to increase 75%–131%, depending on grant restrictions, relative to existing market prices for a new broadband cooperative to become financially feasible. Put differently, the cooperative would not cash flow at market prices unless there was at least 14 potential subscribers per mile at a 62% take rate. For a cooperative, the grant restriction that providers offer a minimum level of speed at a maximum price results in a high level of subsidization by high-speed to low-speed members to support the business. Given grant funding and member equity investments, financial infeasibility has little to do with construction costs, than with annual operational and maintenance costs required to sustain the system long term. More reasonable feasibility scenarios occur for existing utility cooperatives expanding services into broadband, particularly areas with a high proportion of high-speed, year-round users and strong take rates. Consideration of public benefits of broadband arguably needs to be added to the equation, particularly surrounding access to healthcare and educational purposes, and as a prerequisite to supporting taxpayer-funded public-private partnerships to expand broadband services. Policy levers to eliminate or subsidize property taxes and pole rental costs reduce cash flow prices considerably; however, feasibility is highly sensitive to assumed take rates.

Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) training programs were developed to provide guidance to fruit and vegetable growers on how to reduce food safety risks on the farm. These programs have been enhanced over the years due, in part, to increasing buyer and regulatory requirements. However, the costs of implementing additional food safety practices has been identified as a primary barrier to long-term farm financial feasibility, particularly for smaller scale producers. A survey of past participants in New York State revealed that increasing food safety improvements facilitated by GAPs have not significantly impacted the size of farm operations or the types of crops grown. In terms of farm size, we show that both the financial costs and financial benefits of food safety improvements increase with farm size, but at decreasing rates. In so doing, relatively higher market sales gains per acre by smaller farms from additional food safety investments offset the relatively higher costs to them of their implementation. We also demonstrate that benefits of food safety improvements were significantly higher for farms that had third-party food safety audits and for those that market primarily through wholesale channels. The results should prove welcome by educators as they encourage participation by all scales of producers in GAPs trainings and for growers in understanding that food safety investments can support both reduced microbial risks and sales growth.

Rural Wealth Creation Impacts of Urbanbased Local Food System Initiatives: A Delphi Method Examination of the Impacts on Intellectual Capital

Policymakers and economic developers are increasingly interested in the impacts of local food systems, yet attempts to obtain accurate estimates are often complicated by a lack of available data. Utilizing a unique data set from producers in New York, we examine the extent of differential purchasing and sales patterns for small-scale direct agriculture (SDA) producers. The supplemental data are integrated into a regional input-output model to assess the total effects and distributional implications of equivalent policies targeted to agriculture sectors. We demonstrate that SDA producers have different expenditure patterns than other agricultural producers and, for equivalent policy shocks targeted toward agriculture industry expansion, have lower total employment and output impacts, but higher effects on labor income and total value added than non-SDA producers. Our results underscore the importance of collecting appropriate data for analysis and outline the local economic benefits of small-scale local food system participants. Assessing the Economic Impacts of ‘Local’ Food System Producers by Scale: A Case Study from New York As interest in local food systems continues to grow, policymakers and economic developers grapple with better understanding the impacts on local communities and economies (Clancy, 2010; Jensen, 2010; King et al., 2010; Martinez et al., 2010; Pirog & O'Hara, 2013; The National Research Committee on Twenty-First Century Systems Agriculture, 2010). Often such interests are driven by efforts focused on improving diet and health outcomes (e.g., increasing consumption of locally-produced fresh fruits and vegetables) or improving healthy food access for disadvantaged consumers (e.g., establishing farmers’ markets in rural or urban food deserts). On the producers’ side, support for expanding local food marketing opportunities often centers on improving access to markets and profitability. The role of smalland medium-scale producers in developing local and regional food systems has also attracted renewed attention. The strong growth in local food systems’ direct-toconsumer (D2C) marketing channels in the United States, such as farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture (CSA), are dominated by smaller-scale producers (Low & Vogel, 2011). Recent attention towards the development of regional food hubs and values-based supply chains has expanded marketing efforts to retail, wholesale, and institutional channels, and these efforts are often combined with a commitment to buy from smallto medium-sized local producers whenever possible (Barham et al., 2012; Hardesty et al., 2014). Efforts to develop a better understanding of the purchasing and sales practices by smalland medium-scale producers are a vital step in quantifying their economic impacts. Indeed, Heady and Sonka (1974) used Input-Output (IO) analysis and mathematical programming techniques to simulate that smaller farms rather than larger farms that were encouraged by

U.S. ethanol policies have contributed to changes in the levels and the volatilities of revenues and costs facing ethanol firms. The implications of these policies for optimal investment behavior are investigated through an extension of the real options framework that allows for the consideration of volatility in both revenue and cost components, as well as the correlation between them. The effects of policy affecting plant revenues dominate the effects of those policies affecting production costs. In the absence of these policies, much of the recent expansionary periods would have not existed and market conditions in the late-1990s would have led to some plant closures. We also show that, regardless of plant size, U.S. ethanol policy has narrowed the distance between the optimal entry and exit curves, implying a more narrow range of inactivity and indicative of a more volatile evolution for the industry than would have existed otherwise.

Farmers markets are drawing increasing attention by consumers as a local source of fresh foods; by producers as an alternative marketing opportunity to improve farm sales; and by policy makers concerned about the limited availability of affordable, nutritious foods in low-income, sparsely-populated rural areas. Using unique data collected from customers, vendors, and markets in a rural region of New York State, we develop an empirical model of subjective and objective measures of vendor performance to identify important factors for improved market sustainability. The empirical results suggest four inter-related planning recommendations when considering market and public policy interventions: (1) establishing larger, centrally located markets with public sector contributions, (2) targeting variety in products and vendors, (3) prioritizing attention to marketing and promotion, and (4) reducing cost burdens to underserved, low-income residents. As rural areas are spatially unique, future research across a variety of rural communities and regions will be important to the further development of sound initiatives aimed at improving market performance and access to healthy foods.

Abstract An analytical framework and ranking system is developed to summarize the primary factors affecting marketing channel performance and to prioritize those channels with the greatest opportunity for success. An application of the model is conducted using case-study evidence from four small-scale diversified vegetable crop producers in Central New York. The relative costs and benefits of alternative wholesale and direct marketing channels are investigated, including how the factors of risk, owner and paid labor, profits, lifestyle preferences and sales volume interact to impact optimal market channel selection. Given the highly perishable nature of the crops grown, along with the risks and potential sales volume of particular channels, a combination of different marketing channels is needed to maximize overall firm performance.

Cluster thinning is practiced to reduce grapevine crop load and advance ripening parameters, such as soluble solids, which may or may not lead to higher quality wine. It is often implemented in the field with little or no specificity, and its practicality has been questioned because of increased production costs and lost yields. New analytical methods are introduced that combine commonly available yield and cost data with estimated parameters for grape quality and willingness-to-pay. The result is a tailored economic model that allows growers to calculate their optimal yields and prices within a rigorous, quantitative decision-making framework.

The purpose of this paper was to identify effective dairy farm management adjustments related to recent structural changes in agricultural commodity markets because of expanded biofuels production and other market factors. We developed a mathematical programming model of a representative dairy farm in New York State to estimate the effects of changes in the relative prices of important feed components on farm profitability, identify optimal adjustments for on-farm feed production, crop sales, and dairy rations that account for expanded utilization of corn distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), and point out potential implications of these adjustments on whole-farm nutrient planning. We mapped out an effective farm-level demand curve for DDGS by varying DDGS prices relative to other primary feed ingredients, which allowed us to compare DDGS utilization at alternative market conditions. Had the relative prices of major feed ingredients remained at their historical averages, our results suggest that there is only modest potential for feeding DDGS through supplementation in rations for dry cows and heifers as a substitute for soybean meal. However, the relatively lower DDGS prices experienced in 2008 imply an expanded optimal use of DDGS to include rations for lactating cows at 10% of the total mixed ration. Despite these expanded opportunities for DDGS at lower prices, the effects on farm net returns were modest. The most important considerations are perhaps those related to changes in the phosphorus (P) levels in the dairy waste. We showed that including moderate levels of DDGS (10%) in rations for lactating cows did not significantly increase P excretion. However, if the rations for dry cows and heifers were supplemented with DDGS, P excretion did increase, resulting in sizable increases of plant-available phosphorus applied to cropland well beyond crop nutrient requirements. Although our results show that it is economically optimal for the dairy producer to incorporate DDGS into these rations, some operations will be unable to accommodate the additional P because of existing nutrient management recommendations, soil P status, and the number of acres available for manure spreading.

It is the Policy of Cornell University actively to support equality of educational and employment opportunity. No person shall be denied admission to any educational program or activity or be denied employment on the basis of any The University is committed to the maintenance of affirmative action programs which will assure the continuation of such equality of opportunity. respectively. The authors would like acknowledge the substantial support and contributions from several people that made this project possible, including Allyson Jones-Brimmer (Cornell University summer intern); Introduction: With the increased interest in local foods and the growth in farmers' markets (FM), it is important to take the time to examine and understand customer interest and buying patterns at FMs, but also to receive input from vendors and market managers on management techniques, market operations, and ways to improve vendor and overall market performance. The purpose of this bulletin is to describe the results of a project conducted in six counties in Northern New York in the summer of 2008 to examine these issues.

nergy use, production, and the need to develop renewable energy sources are becoming prominent issues at the federal, state, and local levels. Several municipalities in upstate New York are addressing energy issues at the community level by pursuing initiatives to implement community energy plans, develop local renewable sources of energy, and encourage energy conservation and increased effi ciency among residents, businesses, and municipal governments. Here, we highlight the considerations and challenges faced by several rural New York communities that are currently working on renewable energy and energy conservation initiatives. Th is information may serve as a useful guide for other communities to follow in developing their own energy initiatives.