Rural firms, farms and the local economy - a focus on small and medium-sized towns

Small and medium-sized towns have traditionally formed an integral part of the agricultural sector and wider rural economy, acting as a source of farm inputs, a first destination of farm outputs and as a source of consumer goods and services to farm households. In recent years, this relationship has been substantially eroded through processes socio-economic restructuring, including the transformation of agriculture and a decline in other primary industries. Further, a number of endogenous and exogenous drivers have resulted in the uneven development of rural economies throughout Europe, leading not only to disparities but also to decline of small and medium sized towns as thriving economic and service centres. As a result, these settlements have received increasing attention from policy makers aiming to both maintain the traditional socio-economic fabric of rural areas, and to stimulate rural development through territorial, as opposed to sectoral – and namely agricultural – approaches. This paper considers these two issues through an analysis of local economic linkages in and around small and medium-sized towns. Using primary data collected in a study of thirty towns across five European countries, the paper examines the degree to which local firms and farms are integrated into the local economies of such towns relative to other sectors, and identifies the organisational characteristics associated with strong and weak local integration. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of evolving European rural development policy.

The Social Return on Investment (SROI) of the Master Gardener Programme

Background Garden Organic’s volunteer mentor network team coordinates and manages a number of programmes each designed to promote the core principles of organic horticulture and the benefits that composting and growing your own produce can bring

Critical Pebbling Numbers of Graphs

We define three new pebbling parameters of a connected graph $G$, the $r$-, $g$-, and $u$-critical pebbling numbers. Together with the pebbling number, the optimal pebbling number, the number of vertices $n$ and the diameter $d$ of the graph, this yields 7 graph parameters. We determine the relationships between these parameters. We investigate properties of the $r$-critical pebbling number, and distinguish between greedy graphs, thrifty graphs, and graphs for which the $r$-critical pebbling number is $2^d$.Comment: 26 page

Small towns and the rural economy : a study of their contemporary functions and potential role in rural development

As Rural Development assumes a greater importance in European policy, one strategy to stimulate economic activity across a broad range of sectors is to use small towns as a focal point for economic development. This may be particularly relevant in the UK where there is increasing concern over the future vitality and viability of these towns. However, such a strategy rests on the assumption that there is a strong level of interdependence between small towns and their surrounding areas. While their historical legacy suggests close integration, developments in the wider economy and resultant socio-economic restructuring have undermined the traditional functions of small towns and may have severed many of these local linkages. Methodologies are developed to measure the size and spatial distribution of economic linkages in and around two small towns in rural England; one located in the 'remote' area of South Devon, and one in more 'accessible' Buckinghamshire. Results from two validation exercises indicate that self-completion methods are a useful means of obtaining spatial economic data from producers and consumers. Analysis compares the degree of economic integration of the towns into their respective local economies, and identifies key characteristics of firms and households that are good predictors of strong local integration. Results show that the strength of local economic integration is a function of economic and demographic structure as well as proximity to urban centres. This illustrates that the functional role of small towns in the economy is a more useful criterion on which to base policy recommendations than is demographic size. The town in the 'remote' rural area is found to be more strongly integrated into its locality than the town in the 'accessible' area; indicating that benefits of intervention are more likely to 'trickle out' into the surrounding area in the former case. Further, the minimal role of agriculture in the local economy implies that traditional measures of farm support are no longer likely to provide a valuable method of supporting rural communities. A useful area for subsequent enquiry would be to employ an 'integration index' to develop settlement typologies so that more generalisations can be made to aid the process of policy formulation

Exploring the social context of risk perception and behaviour: Farmers’ response to bovine tuberculosis

While agricultural risk and risk perception has received significant attention in the literature, few studies have explored the factors that influence the way farmers respond to particular risks. This paper uses the case of bovine tuberculosis (bTB), one of the most significant risks currently facing the English cattle farming industry, to explore these factors, with a particular focus on the role of social networks. A large scale postal survey distributed to beef and dairy farmers in the south west of England provides representative data which are subjected to factor and cluster analysis in order explore farmer views towards and responses to disease risk. Two groups of farmers are identified which can be distinguished from each other based on their attitudes towards bTB and the nature of their social networks. Farmers with wider, more externally focussed social networks are found to be more resilient than those whose social networks are restricted to family members and other farmers. However, while differences between the two groups are found in terms of their attitudes towards bTB, no differences are found in relation to their risk management behaviour, with few farmers taking clear action to reduce the risk of their herds contracting the disease. In order to address the identified disconnection between attitudes and behaviour, a number of potential interventions are put forward and discussed

S.B. 165: Comparative Negligence in Ohio

On March 4, 1980, the Ohio General Assembly finally concurred on an amended form of Senate Bill 165, and when the Governor added his signature, Ohio had a comparative negligence statute. The law represents the culmination of long and arduous efforts at compromise in the legislature and follows more than seven years of fierce opposition by insurance companies and the insurance lobby. When the opposition finally withdrew and the last wrinkles were ironed out, the lawmakers devised a mathematical damages apportionment system for negligence cases where contributory negligence is asserted. However, the Act leaves important questions unanswered, and problems which are certain to arise are not even approached in Ohio Revised Code section 2315.19. The bench and the bar of Ohio have been left with the task of supplying solutions to such problems, with little help from any legislative history. This note will explore selected areas of Ohio law which will be affected by the Act, and analyze expected impacts and possible consequences of the Act. The first issue likely to be raised under section 2315.19 is whether it will apply retroactively or prospectively, from the date of the injury or the date the claim is filed; therefore, this area is examined first. This note will include analysis of last clear chance and assumption of risk because an earlier version of S.B. 165 was expressly inapplicable to these doctrines, whereas section 2315.19 does not mention them. Strict products liability is a growing area of tort law and it has a particularly interesting background in Ohio law. Since it overlaps substantially into negligence law, products liability raises rather unique problems. Finally, a section on multi-party litigation is included because it is the most complicated area of law addressed in section 2315.19, and is likely to be the most troublesome in the courts

Conducting Comprehensive Workforce Needs Assessments in Child Welfare

Staff recruitment, selection, and retention are persistent challenges for many child welfare agencies. Agency directors recognize these challenges but often lack the capacity or strong relationships with human resources (HR) to hire and keep the right child welfare staff. The lack of evidence-based practices to address child welfare workforce issues compounds the situation. The Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD) was created through a 5-year cooperative agreement with the Children\u27s Bureau to advance knowledge about evidence-informed workforce interventions, test a variety of interventions in real-world settings, and examine how workforce stability is related to outcomes for children. The QIC-WD partnered with eight child welfare agencies (including state, county, and tribal systems) to test the effectiveness of promising workforce interventions. Each site identified an implementation team made up of agency leadership, caseworkers, supervisors, HR professionals, quality assurance/continuous quality improvement staff, and training administrators. The QIC-WD provides workforce, implementation, and evaluation specialists, known as a WIE team, to work with each site. The QIC-WD created a continuous workforce development process (adapted from the implementation and evaluation approach developed by the Permanency Innovations Initiative) to guide its work selecting, implementing, and evaluating workforce interventions. The first phase of this process is exploration, which includes a comprehensive workforce needs assessment to identify a specific workforce problem, who it affects, why it exists, and barriers or facilitators to addressing the problem; a theory of change for how to improve it; and an intervention to address it. Exploration is followed by the installation, initial implementation, and full implementation phases. Each phase includes significant teaming and evaluation components. Many types of data are used to inform the assessment, such as HR recruitment, hiring, and retention metrics; agency records, such as exit surveys or past evaluation studies; organizational culture and climate survey results; and data on agency readiness for change. The WIE teams work with each site to provide context and additional qualitative information not available through existing data sources. The QIC-WD learned a variety of valuable lessons about this process: The assessment takes months to complete because it is a data-driven process where one question often leads to more questions. Agencies vary in the extent to which they track the necessary data to accurately calculate employee turnover. In some cases, HR and program staff have limited experience working together and are not fully aware of all the available data across the two departments. Very few public child welfare agencies have a unique identifier in place to link employee HR data to child welfare case outcomes. Conducting a comprehensive workforce needs assessment is new to most public child welfare agencies. The assessment is only the first step in a continuous workforce development process, yet it is crucial because it is the foundation for the implementation and evaluation activities that come next. For more information visit the QIC-WD website (https://www.qic-wd.org/) or attend the Children\u27s Bureau Evaluation Summit in August 2019.For more information, contact Michelle Graef, project director for the QIC-WD, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Center on Children, Families and the Law at [email protected]