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Craft breweries aren't just a fun place to meet up with friends. They may be fueling an unprecedented geographic expansion of hop production across the U.S., according to researchers at Penn State and The University of Toledo. Their findings suggest that as more craft breweries emerge around the country, so may new opportunities for farmers.

Conventional measures of innovation suggest that only big cities foster new ideas, but a more comprehensive measure developed at the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development shows that innovation is widespread even in rural places not typically thought of as innovative. This "hidden" innovation brings economic benefits to businesses and communities, according to researchers, whose findings will help decision makers think in new ways about innovation and how they can support it.

With funding from the Northeast Center, a multi-state team will bring the Marketing Hometown America program to the Northeast Region. The team is composed of members from Penn State Extension, West Virginia University Extension, and University of New Hampshire Extension.

A collection of articles aimed at providing health and economic information to farmers and agricultural professionals was published in The Delmarva Farmer and is a useful resource for those working with farming communities. It was just one of the outcomes from two state-wide forums organized last year by recipients of a Northeast Center grant.

In 2018, the Farm Fresh Food Boxes project received a grant from the Center to demonstrate the impact of their project using selected community economic development indicators. They have developed an infographic and report to share their findings.

Is your community searching for economic development opportunities and better food access? Farm Fresh Food Box (F3B) is an innovative model in which farmers and retailers provide affordable fresh produce to rural customers. If you're interested in learning more about the F3B model, check out the team's December 5 webinar (register by December 4), and attend their "deep-dive virtual workshops" in 2020.

Many online resources are now available from the 2019 Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Conference, which took place in Astoria, Oregon in October. The conference theme emphasized the “triple bottom line” approach to supporting tourism and outdoor recreation development, which emphasizes the ecology, economy, and people involved with places and experiences.

A new book of case studies from across North and Central America provides a look at nine innovative approaches taken to develop sustainable tourism in a variety of contexts. The book, titled "Innovative and Promising Practices in Sustainable Tourism" and edited by Nicole Vaugeous, Miles Phillips, Doug Arbogast and Patrick Brouder, is freely available online.

The North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) held its annual meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, this year, and the Center was well-represented. Center Director Stephan Goetz, the 2019 president-elect of NARSC, delivered the presidential address, titled "Network Applications in Regional Science: New Insights from Old Tools." In addition, Postdoctoral Scholars Elizabeth Dobis, Devon Meadocroft, and Zheng Tian presented on their research.

Northeast Center Postdoctoral Scholar Sarah Rocker was featured recently in the newsletter of the Food Systems Leadership Network of the Wallace Center at Winrock International. Check out the profile, authored by Annalina Kazickas, for a look into how Sarah found her way to food systems work, what inspires her, plus a peek at her home garden!

For several days in September, the Northeast Center hosted Dr. Charlie French, Associate Extension Professor at University of New Hampshire, while he conducted research on resilient, rural communities including the role of innovation. As part of his visit, he gave a seminar titled "Rural Innovation Redefined." A recording of his presentation is available online.

In October, Dr. Heather Stephens, Assistant Professor of Resource Economics and Management at West Virginia University and incoming Chair of the NERCRD Technical Advisory Committee, gave an invited seminar at Penn State titled "Incentivizing the Missing Middle: The Role of Economic Development Policy." The presentation and the working paper on which it was based are both available online.

The Northeast Center is reissuing its 2019 Request for Proposals (RFP) to its small-grants program. The program is designed to help Northeast land-grant university faculty and educators document the impacts of their work while also encouraging collaboration across state lines. This new iteration of the RFP includes changes aimed at making the program more accessible to a wider audience by reducing the number of team members required and allowing more flexibility in the geographic composition of funded teams. Proposals will be due January 10, 2020.

Stephan Goetz and his co-authors recently received awards for their published research from the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences and from Emerald Publishing.

Stephan Goetz, Director of the Northeast Center, discusses the factors that make some communities more resilient in recovering from economic downturns in this 12-minute interview with Wisconsin Public Radio.

The rural population in the U.S. is aging at a more rapid rate than in urban areas, while disparities in rural health and life expectancy continue to grow. A new five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) will fund a Penn State-led project to build an interdisciplinary network of researchers focusing on rural population health and aging.

The National Association for Community Development Extension Professionals (NACDEP) is now accepting proposals for their 2020 conference, which is scheduled to take place May 31-June 30, 2020 in Portsmouth, NH. Deadline for submission is Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 11:59pm.

Farmers, researchers, agricultural service providers, tourism professionals, and others interested in agritourism are invited to submit proposals to present at the International Workshop on Agritourism in Burlington, Vermont October 27-29, 2020. The call for proposals will close Jan 31.

Mark your calendars for the 2020 National Health Outreach Conference! The conference will be held May 13-15, 2020 at the Marriott on the Plaza in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. With the theme of “The Grand Challenge: Building a Healthy Future for All,” there will be sessions related to Nutrition, Health, 4-H Youth Development, Workforce Development, Human Development, and many other topics.

A new way of measuring how relationships in a network change over time can reveal important details about the network, according to researchers at the Northeast Regional Center and the Korean Rural Economic Institute. For example, when applied to the world economy, the method detected the greatest amount of network change during 2008-09, the time of the global financial crisis.