The goals of this analysis are to examine the economic impacts of local food production and sales versus the economic impacts of conventional agricultural production and conventional food sales. By examining the economic impacts accruing from local food production and sales in relation to the economic impacts from conventional agricultural production and sales, we are afforded the opportunity to examine how each of these activities affects a regional economy. Many previous studies have examined these impacts; however each has been constrained by a lack of primary data on farm enterprise budget data. As will be discussed in the following section, this lack of primary data means that previous research is relying on a tenuous assumption which ultimately impacts the magnitude of their results (Martinez et al., 2010; Swenson, 2011; Boys and Hughes, 2013). Why primary data on local food production are necessary Primary data on local food production are necessary owing to potential differences between regional production technologies and the national production function implicitly assumed by IMPLAN. These differences can arise from a variety of factors such as differences in technology and technology adoption, differences in resource prices and availability, aggregation bias resulting from many industries being included in a single IMPLAN sector, etc. If these (or other) differences exist, then the accuracy of the results reported by IMPLAN can
Answers & Comments
Answer:
The goals of this analysis are to examine the economic impacts of local food production and sales versus the economic impacts of conventional agricultural production and conventional food sales. By examining the economic impacts accruing from local food production and sales in relation to the economic impacts from conventional agricultural production and sales, we are afforded the opportunity to examine how each of these activities affects a regional economy. Many previous studies have examined these impacts; however each has been constrained by a lack of primary data on farm enterprise budget data. As will be discussed in the following section, this lack of primary data means that previous research is relying on a tenuous assumption which ultimately impacts the magnitude of their results (Martinez et al., 2010; Swenson, 2011; Boys and Hughes, 2013). Why primary data on local food production are necessary Primary data on local food production are necessary owing to potential differences between regional production technologies and the national production function implicitly assumed by IMPLAN. These differences can arise from a variety of factors such as differences in technology and technology adoption, differences in resource prices and availability, aggregation bias resulting from many industries being included in a single IMPLAN sector, etc. If these (or other) differences exist, then the accuracy of the results reported by IMPLAN can