ERS cosponsored the conference "Promoting the Social
and Economic Vitality of Rural America: The Role of Education"
with the Southern Rural Development Center in April 2003.
The conference brought together social scientists and education
specialists from academia, government, and policy centers
to discuss such topics as the impact of local schools on economic
growth, school-employer partnerships, at-risk school populations,
and the links between academic achievement and rural workforce
outcomes. Robert Gibbs
Performance-Based
Environmental Policies
ERS cosponsored a workshop with the Farm Foundation, Winrock's
Henry A. Wallace Center, the UC-Berkeley Center for Sustainable
Development, and Defenders of Wildlife in March 2003. The
workshop reconciled theoretical benefits of performance-based
policies for cost-effective improvements in agricultural water
quality with the realistic constraints on their use. Participants
included people working with performance-based approaches
in the field, local stakeholders, scientists involved with
monitoring and measuring environmental performance, economists,
policymakers, and regulators. For watersheds actively pursuing
such approaches in Iowa, California, New York, Oregon, and
Florida, the workshop participants defined factors influencing
performance-based policies for their agricultures, identified
strategies for alleviating obstacles to implementation, and
designed specific policy approaches for future pilot testing
and analysis. Ralph
Heimlich
ERS Hosts Meeting on
Organic Sector Data
On February 25, ERS hosted "Briefing and Roundtable:
USDA Surveys and Organic Sector Data Needs." USDA managers
of several major agricultural surveys in the Agricultural
Marketing Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service,
and ERS discussed their surveys and opportunities for expanding
them to include more information on organic production and
marketing. Representatives from USDA agencies and several
organic interest groups, including the Organic Trade Association
and the Organic Farming Research Foundation, attended. A budget
initiative to enhance organic data collection is planned,
as well as incremental changes in existing surveys to get
better data on organic production. Utpal
Vasavada
