Manufacturing, specifically food and beverage production, is a key employer in rural areas and has linkages to the agricultural sector. Using data drawn from the National Establishment Time‐Series for 2013–15, we explore what entrepreneurship, farm marketing channel innovations, and more traditional spatial factors influence the location decisions of food and beverage manufacturing establishment start‐ups in the U.S. We find that traditional spatial decision factors still matter but, in addition, proxies for farm adoption of downstream innovations are also related to start‐ups. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for food market dynamics and rural economic development policy.
An outbreak of COVID‐19 among farmworkers could have significant impacts on the workers, agricultural producers, and the consumers. Farmers are implementing new labor management practices to slow the spread of the virus among workers. Since immigration is temporarily restricted, farmers may have difficulty securing a sufficient workforce. We test whether changes in the unemployment rate affected H‐2A guest worker demand before the pandemic and find a statistically significant negative impact. Nevertheless, we expect that H‐2A recruitment will be vital to sustaining agricultural production. We conclude by discussing potential long‐term impacts of the pandemic on farm labor supply and demand.
States have increasingly adopted cottage food laws across the United States. The laws allow small‐scale food entrepreneurs to produce nonrefrigerated foods in home kitchens and sell them via direct‐to‐consumer outlets. Research has not yet established if the policies are, as intended, supporting start‐up food manufacturing businesses nationally. We estimate a differences‐in‐differences model using state‐level panel data to evaluate whether the passage of cottage food laws impacted the number of manufactured baked good establishments. We find a positive impact on the number of both employer and nonemployer businesses, with a relatively greater proportional impact for nonemployer businesses.
This paper examines the effects of changes in housing demand on H-2A employment within commuting zones from 2001 to 2017. Agricultural employers who demonstrate that no workers in the domestic labor market are willing or able to perform a seasonal or temporary farm job can apply for certification to hire guest workers through the H-2A visa program. H-2A employment grew more than 450% between 2001 and 2019 from 45,000 to 258,000. This is one of the first papers to econometrically examine causal factors that contributed to the growth of H-2A employment. We find that a 1% increase in housing demand leads to a 0.40%-0.97% increase in H-2A employment. We also show suggestive evidence that changes in housing demand affect H-2A employment through shifts in the demand for workers in nonfarm industries that pull workers from the agricultural sector. Consistent with previous literature, we show that positive housing demand shocks lead to increased employment in construction and other nontradable sectors that traditionally hire immigrant workers. We also find positive effects of housing demand on local farm wages, consistent with an inward shift in the local farm labor supply during housing booms.
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