Value-Added Agricultural Enterprises and Local Economic Performance

Proponents of value-added agricultural enterprises (VAAE) argue for favorable government policies and funds to promote these industries as a local development strategy. Though regularly advocated at all levels of government, the beliefs regarding the benefits of VAAE to local economies merit empirical investigation. A county-level analysis of the contiguous U.S. states for a ten-year time period was used to evaluate the contribution of selected VAAE to county economic well-being. The two-stage least squares regression coupled with spatial econometric methods suggests that the support for these selected VAAE as a tool of local economic well-being, measured using income and employment growth and change in poverty rates, is not well founded.