The Evolution of Racehorse Clusters in the United States: Geographic Analysis and Implications for Sustainable Agricultural Development

Abstract

Sustainability is frequently defined as the need to place equal emphasis on three societal goals: economic prosperity, environment, and social equity. This “triple bottom line” (TBL) framework is embraced by practitioners in both corporate and government settings. Within agriculture, the horse-racing industry and its breeding component are an interesting case study for the TBL approach to local development. The sector is to some extent a “knowledge industry”, agglomerating in relatively few regions worldwide. In the USA, choices made by breeders or owners are likely affected by sudden changes in specific state policies, especially those related to gambling. Both of these unusual conditions—for agriculture at least—have been playing out against a background of national decline in the number of registered racehorse breeding stock. This study traces changes, between 1995 and 2017, in the geographic distribution of registered Thoroughbred and Standardbred stallions. We find that isolated, scattered registered stallions have largely disappeared, strengthening one or more core states (or counties) that had an initially high percentage of stallions. The gainers and losers among previously core regions appear to be heavily influenced by state-level policies. It follows that such policies can influence the conservation of agricultural landscapes as well as racing revenues.

China’s Equine Industries in a Transitional Economy: Development, Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

“…Specifically, the most recently available data from FAO and NBSC are used to assess the national trends and regional distributions of China's horse population through a graphical analysis, and to identify the major factors behind the steady decline in China's horse population and quantify their impacts through a regression analysis. While equine industries and their roles in the local economy, climate change, and sustainable development have received more attention in recent years [7][8][9][10][11][12], this study contributes to the literature by addressing several research questions about the equine industries in China, a large equine nation but understudied in the equine literature. This paper is organized into five sections: Following this introduction, Section 2 introduces the data and methods, Section 3 presents the empirical results, Section 4 discusses the challenges and opportunities for China's equine industries, and Section 5 summarizes the major conclusions.…”