Agricultural and Resource Economics – �鶹��Ƶ

Understanding conservation practices and future land use intentions among local stakeholders

Ada Inman — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 20:44:17 +0000

In preparation for expected growth, the Village of DeForest plans to conduct outreach to local stakeholders and property owners to better understand the attitudes and intentions of local farmers related to development. The goal of this effort is to balance development with environmental conservation planning and community well-being, align land use planning with future opportunities, and demonstrate a collaborative approach to growth. This report examines how the Village of DeForest can proactively prepare for projected population and economic growth and provides specific recommendations on how to approach local outreach and community engagement.

Contact: UniverCityAlliance@wisc.edu

Analyzing the costs and benefits of the Wausau ByBlock Project

Ada Inman — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 17:44:07 +0000

Plastic, an epochal human invention, is now emerging as an environmental challenge. According to the data provided by the UN Environment Program, an annual discharge of 19 to 23 million tons of plastic waste clogs ecosystems, and equivalent to a volume commensurate with 2000 fully loaded garbage trucks. The indiscriminate disposal of plastic poses a threat to global water bodies, such as oceans, rivers, and lakes at risk of congestion.

This urgency makes it significant of developing recycling methods to address the challenges posed by plastic pollution. A noteworthy initiative in this regard is a startup company located in Los Angeles, known as ByFusion. ByFusion is actively seeking collaboration with the government of Wausau to establish a new facility in this region. The purpose of this report is to assist the Wausau government analyzing the costs and benefits associated with partnering with ByFusion. The aim is to determine the financial feasibility of initiating the ByBlock project in the area.

UniverCity Contact Info: UniverCityAlliance@wisc.edu

Exploring cooperative options with stakeholders of Innovation Center Stoughton

Ada Inman — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 21:42:52 +0000

Students prepared recommendations and business plans for child care, education, housing, and transportation cooperatives in Stoughton. UniverCity Year Contact Info: UniverCityAlliance@wisc.edu [...]

Researching childcare cooperatives for economic sustainability in Outagamie County

Ada Inman — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 21:41:12 +0000

During the spring 2022 semester, the students in AAE 323 worked on a project to help Outagamie County understand and evaluate cooperative solutions to their childcare crisis. The following report includes the work students completed regarding various cooperative models that are used for delivering childcare services. The report includes sections on parent led cooperatives, worker owned cooperatives, employer led cooperatives, and shared services
cooperatives and networks. Each section includes a description of the cooperative type, a short case study of a specific cooperative of that type, and analysis of how that type of cooperative may or may not be a good fit for Outagamie County. The students assigned to complete the worker owned cooperative portion of this report, did not complete the assignment correctly, so there is not a case study on a worker owned child care cooperatives.

UniverCity Year Contact Info: UniverCityAlliance@wisc.edu

Mapping urban inundation areas for sustainable drainage and waterlogging management to climate change. The case of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:40:13 +0000

Due to its topography and tropical monsoon climate, Vietnam is susceptible to the detrimental effects of climate change. Unfortunately, the infrastructure in the Mekong Delta Region is inadequate and unable to manage the consequences. An Giang is the upstream province of the Mekong Delta, hence the floods depth and length are more and longer than in other provinces in the region. Households in the low-lying areas, particularly in the City of Long Xuyen suffer the most from the annual flooding.

The �鶹��Ƶ model is the appropriate strategy employing the collaborative efforts of university participants (lecturers, students, and researchers) and provincial authorities, while university partners interact closely with grassroots communities. An Giang university lecturers, researchers, students, city authorities, and practitioners has used �鶹��Ƶ model to drainage systems and urban flooding in Long Xuyen City. The project aims to map inundated areas in local wards and the city centre of Long Xuyen and to propose initiatives on sustainable drainage and waterlogging management that contribute to the Action Plan on “Smart Water City” and the improved infrastructure of sustainable drainage and waterlogging management in response to climate change by 2025.

Many activities have been conducted within the project. An Giang university lecturers, city partners, and local officials in 8 wards of Long Xuyen city have collaborated effectively to determine the inadequate drainage system in many streets and the lack of complete old and new drainage systems in Long Xuyen City. Although many streets have been elevated to prevent flooding, the problem persists in other streets, especially after excessive rain. Lecturers and students participated in mapping training using GIS software and partnered with personnel in 8 wards to identify 15 inundated street segments in Long Xuyen City.

Cooperatives in Adams County: Case studies and analysis ofchildcare, housing, and food systems cooperatives

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:40:04 +0000

In 1980 the world population was at 4.5 billion people and by 1990, that number had increased to 5.3 billion. By the year 2000 that number had surpassed 6 billion and today that number is approaching 8 billion (World Meters). With a population that is growing exponentially comes an increase in the need for basic needs along with an increase in the demographic of people who need care. Healthcare in general today is at a deficit, there is not enough to go around. Especially childcare, which is becoming more expensive and harder to find a plan that works best that fits the needs of one’s family. Throughout the country, there are many enterprisesolutions to the childcare deficit, and the best solution are cooperatives.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Courtney Berner
cberner@wisc.edu

Economic impact of the Durand-Arkansaw School District

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:40:01 +0000

There are three ways to measure the impacts of the Durand-Arkansaw School District on the local community. The first, and natural way, is the impact that the school has on its students in terms of their academic and personal development. The second is how the school contributes to the overall quality of life of the community. The third and final is that the school district is a direct source of economic activity because it employs people, who spend their salary/wages in the local economy, and make other purchases (e.g., utilities, office supplies, etc) that represents spending in the local economy. This memo details the results of the last type of impact. Specifically, how does accounting for 158 jobs impact the local economy? Based on the financial data that was provided to me on the 9th, this report shows the results of a “standard” economic impact assessment.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Steven Deller
scdeller@wisc.edu

The Farming Industry: Profitable Models

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:29 +0000

The Howard County Office of Community Sustainability is seeking food hub-based solutions that connect small and mid-sized farmers in Howard County with restaurants and retailers to expand the market for locally produced agricultural products. Under the supervision of instructor Philip Gottwals, the University of Marylandâ€s PALS-affiliated AREC 489N team studied successes and failures of organizations that have undertaken similar projects to determine the most appropriate and feasible solutions to the issues raised. A review of public data quickly revealed that Howard County’s agricultural sector is both small and highly diversified. As such it offers both opportunities for, and challenges to, the creation of a food hub. Vegetable production, for example, is limited to 110 acres of production with the largest crop acreage devoted to an ornamental crop, pumpkins. The next largest vegetable crops are sweet corn and tomatoes, with all others representing negligible commercial, fresh market acreage. For a food hub to be viable, an increase in production and diversity would be required. Otherwise, it would be impractical to gather and distribute wholesale quantities of vegetables to restaurants, retailers, or wholesalers. Interviews with County farmers confirmed that market opportunity is not limited by facility-based services, such as aggregation, but instead were limited by programmatic and policy restrictions. Chief among their concerns are the impending food safety certification requirements imposed by the federal Food Safety Modernization Act audited by Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification. These regulations, which were previously enforced only on the largest farms, now apply to all fruit and vegetable producers, regardless of farm size or program cost. Unless these standards are adopted at the farm level, local producers would be barred from many, if not all, commercial sales. Further evidence that a facility-based food hub is unlikely to be successful in Howard County can be found in the depth and breadth of the existing food supply chain. Howard County is the epicenter of a 100-mile radius supply chain that includes approximately 4,000 firms that are involved in all aspects of the food industry, including logistics, manufacturing, and distribution. After interviewing businesses operating in these sectors, it was determined that sufficient options to aggregate, ship, or value add were available in the market, but that critical services, such as quality assurance, food safety certification, and marketing support were lacking, putting local farmers at a marked disadvantage over farms from outside the area. Given the above, the project team concluded that it would be a greater benefit to our client if further research and project development efforts were directed toward designing a multi-pronged Quality Assurance Program for the County combined with an associated marketing and brand management program to raise awareness of Howard County farm products. This multifaceted approach strives to implement the newly emerging food safety requirements as a method of expansion into new markets. This allows growers to participate in the supply-chain where well-documented demand for local, GAP-certified produce and quality assured beef cattle exists. The second facet of the approach involves creating a suite of strategic marketing initiatives designed to bolster consumer demand for local food.

Farm to Fork: Opportunities and Constraints

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:28 +0000

Our team devised a three-stage system to implement a food distribution network to serve Anne Arundel County clients including private retailers, public institutions such as schools and hospitals, and eventually privately-owned restaurants. The goal is to maximize the supply of locally sourced produce for customers as the demand for local food continues to rise. This program would create a more economically efficient food distributor that would also generate GroupGAP funding through price premiums only from out-of-county participants. GroupGAP is a USDA farm food safety program that provides the entire specialty crops industry the opportunity to supply and buy fruits, vegetables, and related products that are certified as being produced using Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). Stage 1 will serve as the pilot program, to satisfy the needs of one small buyer. If successful, this will serve as proof of concept, and will be a model for how to grow and improve to take on more customers. An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system will be developed during this phase as the foundation of the infrastructure for the business model. The operationâ€s logistical needs will be met using a jobbers driving service. During Stage 2, the pilotâ€s success will be highlighted to attract new clients, particularly farms both inside and outside Anne Arundel County. In this phase, the ERPâ€s development would reach functional completion, allowing most optimization economics to be automated. Through licensing and LLC partnership funding, the program will use the capital generated to develop infrastructure, increase marketing initiatives, and further GroupGAP subsidization. The marketing plan will expand at this stage to entice new buyers by demonstrating the proof-of-concept price transparency and supply parity pilot run. After sufficient growth, in Stage 3 we estimate the program will be developed enough to meet the demand schedules of much larger institutions such as the Countyâ€s public schools and hospitalsâ€ patient and non-patient demands. By this time, the optimization between local supply and demand would be fully automated in the ERP. Full-time supply chain specialists will work with farmers to determine yield expectations and quality control through the GroupGAP program.