Aziz, Ahmad

Nahashon, Samuel

Tegegne, Fisseha

English

Research Papers in Economics

Assessing Tennessee Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Food 
Protection
Fisseha Tegegne, Samuel Nahashon and Ahmad Aziz
This presentation highlights results of training 
workshops in agricultural bio-security and deliv-
ery of relevant information to diverse stakeholders. 
The workshops were held at the Institute of Agri-
cultural and Environmental Research, Tennessee 
State University. They are funded by the CSREES, 
USDA. Two training workshops have been held, 
and another will be conducted during this year. 
The workshops were scheduled both during the 
academic year and in the summer. This was done to 
accommodate as many participants as possible. The 
participants involved in the workshops were mixed 
and include Tennessee State University students, 
teaching faculty, extension personnel, researchers, 
high school agriculture teachers, and health and 
other science instructors.
A majority of the participants were recruited 
through the State Department of Education and by 
direct invitation. Material on CD prepared by Uni-
versity of Kentucky Extension Service was shared 
with the participants. Speakers from universities 
and government agencies were also invited to make 
presentations on speciﬁ  c topics in which they have 
expertise. Some of the issues discussed were vul-
nerabilities in crops, livestock, and the food supply 
due to deliberate action aimed at causing economic 
and non-economic damage.  
During the ﬁ  rst workshop, a written assessment 
was given to evaluate how much the participants 
learned from the training. During the second work-
shop, a one-page survey was used to get feedback 
from participants on a number of issues ranging 
from their level of concern about agricultural bi-
osecurity to socio-demographic characteristics. Of 
the ﬁ  fty-three participants, responses were received 
from thirty-eight people, a 72-percent response rate. 
About 37 percent and 63 percent of the participants 
indicated that they have learned a lot and quite a 
bit, respectively. Two-thirds of the respondents were 
over thirty years old. 
 A very high proportion (87 percent) of work-
shop participants indicated that their concern about 
bio-security ranged from high to very-high. The 
participants indicated strong interest in protecting 
the food supply and are willing to pay between ﬁ  ve 
percent and 20 percent extra. The training helped 
to increase awareness of bio-security issues among 
the participants. Each participant received a book 
titled Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication 
(CDC 2002) and a Certiﬁ  cate of training comple-
tion. Future workshop will engage more agriculture 
teachers and extension agents who have access to a 
large number of students and farmers, respectively. 
This work provides a useful basis to undertake re-
lated future work and can be adopted by others.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2002. 
Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication. 
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/erc/leaders.pdf.
Tegegne is research associate professor, Nahason is associate 
dean and research associate professor, and Aziz is research 
assistant professor, Institute of Agricultural and Environmental 
Research (IAgER), Tennessee State University, Nashville.

Assessing Tennessee Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Food Protection

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Research Papers in Economics