A project funded by to the Kellogg Foundation Prepared by Duncan Hilchey and Gilbert Gillespie, Community, Food, and Agriculture Program, Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University

Project Summary

As agricultural communities struggle to compete within the context of a global food system, many non-governmental organizations, County Extension field staff and other local agriculture development professionals are looking for tools to monitor and document local agricultural trends, as well as measure the impacts of their programs and services. In recent years considerable attention has been paid to the creation of “sustainability indicators” that are designed to provide quantitative measurement of the economic, social and environmental welfare of communities. In fact, the literature is replete with suggestions for indicator variables, most of which focus on agronomic factors at the farm level or on changes in farm acreage. However, these indicators often rely on expensive primary data collection or on quickly outdated information.

With funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation we are developing “Local Agricultural Viability Indicators” (LAVIs) that will be based on data that is both useful and easily gathered by a county. We are currently working with three pilot counties to identify promising social, economic, and environmental indicators related to local farms, farmers, and farmland. The pilot counties include Lewis, Ontario, and Tioga. Cooperative Extension Leaders in each county are working with us including Michele Ledoux, Jim Ochterski, and Andy Fagan. We believe there is great benefit to indicators in the form of a more informed agricultural community, better evaluation of programs, and improved targeting of public and private resources.

Examples of indicators include which we are exploring include:

• Local food producers’ annual share of total county grocery budget
• The annual percent of county farmland lost to abandonment or development
• The annual percent of county farms with foreclosed loans and bankruptcies.
• We are also experimenting with location quotients such as the percent of farms in a county that are direct marketing divided by the percent of total farms in the state that are direct marketing.

Contact Duncan Hilchey (dlh3@cornell.edu) or Gil Gillespie (gwg2@cornell.edu) if you have questions or comments on this project.

*We see the agricultural viability indicators as one of a handful of potentially useful indicators. Others would include “community food security” and “community civic capacity” (i.e., the capacity of identify and deal with opportunities and problems, perhaps involving Cornelia and Jan Flora’s community capitals framework).