Jonathan Malacarne

This article serves as an introduction to the Special Issue section “Measuring and Enhancing Resilience of United States Rural Communities in the Context of Climate Variability.” To set the stage for this section, we review how climate hazards impact rural areas and synthesize insights that emerge across the issue’s four papers, noting their policy relevance and highlighting opportunities for continued research. We argue that emerging data tools can help program designers and policy makers better support the resilience of rural areas, but that doing so remains complicated by heterogeneity in resources and vulnerabilities across rural areas.

Background/Objectives: Rural communities face a disproportionate burden in terms of diet-related health challenges and have been identified as a target for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s nutrition security initiatives. In this paper, we adopt an asset-based approach and use the Community Capitals Framework to examine the characteristics that support nutrition security in rural communities, using rural northern New England as a case study. Methods: We conducted focus groups and interviews with 32 food and nutrition professionals in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont in 2023 and 2024 to explore the contextual factors that influence nutrition security in rural communities. We coded the data for community assets and mapped the identified assets into the seven dimensions of the Community Capitals Framework: built capital, cultural capital, financial capital, human capital, natural capital, political capital, and social capital. Results: The participants described assets in all dimensions of the Community Capitals Framework except built capital. The specific assets discussed were related to local food production (natural and cultural capital), coordination between food system stakeholders and strong social networks (human and social capital), regional political commitments to food security and nutrition (political capital), and the strong seasonal tourist economy present in some communities (financial capital). Conclusions: Rural communities remain under-studied in the literature regarding nutrition, and little is known about how to advance healthful eating in rural contexts. An asset-based approach was helpful for identifying existing resources that enhance rural nutrition security and may provide an opportunity to characterize and disseminate strategies to advance rural health equity.

Temperate regions, where water supply has not historically been a limiting factor in agriculture or other industries, are expected to face new challenges related to water availability and use. It is important to investigate the gap between farmers’ need for professional support around water management and the services that agricultural advisors can provide. Needs assessments generally consider one of these topics or the other, though we suggest a deeper understanding of the two together is called for. Here, we report on a farmer survey conducted in the state of Maine in the United States (n = 174) and a survey of agricultural advisors conducted in twelve northeastern states (n = 381). By comparing two investigations, we find (a) opportunities for outreach programs both targeted towards the needs of specific agricultural sectors, and (b) professional development topics for agricultural advisors to close the gap between current capacity in the region and farmer needs. Based on these results, we suggest a framework informed by theories of social learning for targeted outreach. We propose that this approach can serve as a model for moving forward with program development in agricultural services into the future, both in the United States and around the world.

Vulnerable households, often the target for efforts to increase resilience, likely hold beliefs about their ability to control outcomes that make them less likely to invest in new technologies. Locus of control provides one way to elicit these beliefs and can help identify populations requiring additional support prior to widespread adoption of new technologies. This paper presents evidence from a large sample of maize‐producing households in Mozambique and Tanzania. A more external locus of control is strongly associated with lower expected returns to improved maize varieties and a reduced probability of their adoption.