NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY (NARDEP) CENTER

With conflicting perspectives on economic, social and environmental public issues, agricultural and rural development policy deliberations have become increasingly contentious even as fiscal policy becomes more restrictive. At the same time, one-size-fits-all policy analyses and modeling can mask critical differential impacts on regions and disadvantaged groups, further raising the stakes. With globalization and the social media movements, new issues are rising to the fore much more rapidly than in the past. In response to these challenges, we propose to create a flexible national network of on-call research expertise, supported by a strong stakeholder input-gathering and dissemination infrastructure. The four Regional Rural Development Centers will leverage their existing research, policy analysis, and information delivery capacities to rapidly respond to emerging and longer-term policy questions. The centers have deep working relationships with land grant higher education institutions nationwide, including tribal and historically black colleges and universities, providing ready access to a highly functional national pool of disciplinary researchers. This is a proposal for a multiple area emphasis policy research center. The National Agricultural and Rural Development Policy Center will emphasize: rural families, households, and economies; farm and agricultural sectors; consumers, food, and nutrition; and environment. We will use Advisory Councils consisting of leading social scientists and policy practitioners for priority setting, and faculty for special studies. Faculty consulting arrangements are less expensive (no need for full time staff); incur lower transactions costs; are more flexible; and recognize the fact that faculty time is valuable, and scarce.