Roundup: December 20, 2024
A regular feature of our growing online journal, The Rural Review, these roundup posts collect notable recent research, analysis, and related rural news and commentary. Feel free to send suggestions for future collections to us here. And, more details on other opportunities to contribute to The Rural Review can be found here.
This will be our last post of the year as we take a few weeks to enjoy a winter break. We look forward to continuing conversations and sharing more rural-related work with you in 2025!
Recent Publications
In “Land is a Huge Integral Part of Our Identity”: Patriarchy and the Gender Asset Gap, published in Sociologia Ruralis, Mary Curtin, Caroline Murphy (both Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, Ireland), Una Woods (School of Law, University of Limerick, Ireland), and Christine Cross (The Business School, Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland) explore the reasons for the low rate of female farm ownership in Ireland through a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with members of the Irish farming sector.
The American Journal of Agricultural Economics published Who (Actually) Gets the Farm? Intergenerational Farm Succession in the United States by Adrian Haws, David R. Just (both Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University), and Joseph Price (Economics, Brigham Young University) offering a novel perspective on this central issue in agricultural policy through population-level evidence on intergenerational farm succession using US census records for millions of farmers’ children.
Nitin Bathla (Architecture, ETH Zurich, Switzerland) published Transhumance Urbanism as an Urban Otherwise: Inhabiting Agrarian Incompletion at the Intersections of Extended Urbanisation-Extended Ruralisation in Antipode. The article, which contributes to scholarship of the interstices of urban and agrarian studies, delves into the persistence of peasant and pastoral strategies amidst the closing down effects of land enclosure and fragmentation as revealed through ethnographic research of the Delhi National Capital Region in India.
News & Commentary
Washington Monthly published an article exploring the role deregulation and private equity have played in gutting U.S. freight rail system. The consequences of prioritizing short-term profits and returns to shareholders may jeopardize any chance of the nation’s industrial renewal.
The International Labour Organization released an article explaining how the latest statistical standards improve knowledge of the challenges and decent work deficits that women in rural areas face and better equip policymakers in formulating effective policies in light of women’s critical role in many rural economic sectors.
An article in The Conversation explores rural China’s emergence as an unlikely epicenter of viral content. Thousands of popular social media influencers present their work in village kitchens and farms as part of the irresistible appeal of country life, serving to wrest the image of rural China from its challenging past into a future of digital-savvy farmers and cultural ascendency.
Lancaster Farming published a story featuring a company successfully using hydroponics to grow lettuce varieties across in the heart of Pennsylvania’s coal region. The Little Leaf Farms’ founder and CEO notes that the greenhouses provide job opportunities in addition to leafy greens to the local community.
Events
Rural Health Research Gateway is offering a webinar entitled An Updated Model of Rural Hospital Financial Distress, offering an overview of the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program’s updated Financial Distress Index (FDI) model. In light of the sustained challenges rural hospitals face to maintain profitability, the model seeks to accurately predict financial distress to help programs and policymakers. The webinar will be held on January 14, 2025. Registration and more information here.
The National Agricultural Law Center is hosting a webinar on the impact of the 2024 election on agricultural law and policy. The webinar will consider how new members of Congress, Republican control of Congress and the White House, agency appointees, unfinished legislation, new priorities and other issues will likely impact farm bill reauthorization and influence food, agricultural, and environmental law for years to come. Register for the January 15, 2025 event here.
