NC1100: Enhancing Rural Development Technology Assessment and Adoption Through Land Grant Partnerships
Statement of Issues and Justification
In this new wave of technology, you cant do it by yourself, you have to form alliances. -Carlos Slim Helu, Mexican BillionaireThe Land Grant system has traditionally served as the agent of change in rural America. Land Grant technology changed how America farmed, releasing millions of people into other occupations (Lobao and Myer, 2001). Increasing farm size and corporatization of our food system yielded huge efficiencies. The fact that far fewer people now farm has changed the way Land Grants must approach delivery of new technologies appropriate to rural communities. At one end of the continuum, we have large enterprises capable of conducting their own research and development, or of simply paying the Land Grants to execute research programs on their behalf. At the other end of the continuum, rural America has family farms and other enterprises that are disconnected from commodity agriculture, and could benefit from Land Grant technology to enhance their productivity in niche markets.
Niche markets are in many ways the future growth markets for rural America. A good example of this is organic agriculture, which started as a fringe movement and has now made its way onto the shelves of most major food retailers. Rural niche enterprises could be agricultural, but also work in a vast array of other sectors, and can be a way for rural areas to compete. In some cases, niche markets can be quite large. For example, a manufacturer of stadium-sized plasma screens in North Dakota dominates a niche, and is a major contributor to the local economy.
In the early days of the Land Grant system, an improvement in cropping techniques or a better variety could be moved from the lab to the field station, and from the field station, via Extension, to early adopter family farms. Early adopter farms would then demonstrate to their neighbors. With niche markets, more often than not, none of the middle parts of the system exist, creating a need develop new ways to move technology more directly from laboratory to end user.
The challenge is in making the market between the niche enterprise and the creators of applicable technologies. In market economics terminology, the market is thin, with few buyers or sellers of a particular improvement or process expertise. The array of rural niche enterprises is matched by an equally complex set of highly specialized disciplines emerging on the Land Grant campuses. Enterprises are unaware of the technologies that might be available. University Intellectual Property managers hunt for entrepreneurs or engage in sometimes quixotic programs attempting to teach faculty how to become businesspeople. Also missing from the information system are feedback loops to inform researchers about emerging technical needs.
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