An Evaluation of Changes to the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program as a Result of USDA’s 2016 Quantitative Performance Measurement Requirements
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Authors
Erdmann, Jen Carson
Issue Date
2022-09
Type
Dissertation
Language
en_US
Keywords
Agricultural subsidies , Agriculture and state , Agriculture--Research , Dissertations, Academic--United States , Performance--Measurement , System theory , United States. Department of Agriculture
Alternative Title
Abstract
This research examined the impact of the United States Department of Agriculture’s 2016 implementation of performance measures on the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (SCBGP) to determine the effects of pre-set quantitative outcome measures on an existing block grant program in the understudied realm of federal agricultural food programs. Beginning with the New Public Management reforms of the 1990s, the topic was explored within the history of the federal government’s incrementally bound emphasis on numerical output measures to quantify interim and final results for its state block grant programs. The study also built on prior evaluations of the SCBGP which identified widespread stakeholder dissatisfaction with the 2016 measures. This quantitative study, framed within the context of systems theory, collected 13 years of SCBGP projects from all 50 states, then classified each project as either research or non-research. From there, three sets of project data were parsed and analyzed: that for Georgia, the other 49 U.S. states, and the 10 other states that receive funding similar to Georgia’s. It was determined that the introduction of performance measures effectively changed the SCBGP from a program that once mostly funded non-research projects to one that funded a significantly higher proportion of research projects. The implications of this change were explored and discussed in terms of what this shift might mean for states as they administer their SCBGP programs, as well as its bearing on the larger realm of federal-to-state agricultural grants administration.
Keywords: SCBGP, Farm Bill, systems theory, incrementalism, federal-to-state grants, New Public Management, performance measures, agricultural research funding
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This dissertation is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, revised in 1976). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of the materials for financial gain with the author's expressed written permissions is not allowed.