This award funds a large scale effort to collect new data about the determinants of agricultural productivity in the United States during the 20th century. The PIs are combining information from several archival sources to compile a single dataset that includes data from over 3000 US counties, collected annually from 1879 to 2002.
With these data, the PIs examine the effects of changes in climate and weather on agricultural productivity. They also examine the impact of R&D spending (at the national, state, and local levels), better education and training for farmers, new technologies, and government programs intended to aid agriculture.
The data sets collected create substantial broader impact; they will be used by a large interdiscplinary research community because they can be sued to study a wide variety of socio-economic issues in rural areas. The data will also help us to understand and predict the effects of climate change on agricultural productivity.
