Rural Economic Analysis Program (REAP) Archive

You've reached the Virginia Cooperative Extension Newsletter Archive. These files cover more than ten years of newsletters posted on our old website (through April/May 2009), and are provided for historical purposes only. As such, they may contain out-of-date references and broken links.

To see our latest newsletters and current information, visit our website at http://www.ext.vt.edu/news/.

Newsletter Archive index: http://sites.ext.vt.edu/newsletter-archive/

About REAP

The Rural Economic Analysis Program, funded by the Commonwealth was a research and educational program housed in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech. The program began in 1988 and ended in 2009. REAP research and analysis had three areas of emphasis: competitiveness, rural and community development, and natural resources/environmental issues. In many cases, these areas are not separate and independent but are overlapping. It is where this overlap occurs that REAP focuses its efforts in order to have the greatest impact. Research findings are made available to users and potential users through written materials, the Internet, and conferences at the state or regional level.

REAP produced four distinct types of publications: horizons, policy papers, research reports, and the state of rural Virginia.

REAP Horizons

Horizons is a short newsletter published bi-monthly beginning in 1990. It had articles on research or current issues of concern to rural Virginia. Horizons was the regular REAP mouthpiece and was distributed to a wide audience.

REAP Policy Papers

Beginning in 1991, REAP-affiliated faculty or invited experts authored a series of REAP Policy Papers. These short (often fewer than five pages) publications were designed to communicate to a broad audience the relevance of policy issues for stakeholders in the Commonwealth. Topics included effects of particular agricultural policies on producers, environmental concerns in the interface between rural and urban areas, waste management, schooling, and institutional issues facing rural communities.

REAP Reports

These publications, which began to be published in 1991, were the main means of reporting details on REAP-sponsored research. Topics spanned the breadth of issues facing rural areas of Virginia and included impacts of agriculture and other industries, effects of growing international trade on Virginia producers, environmental analyses, and financial analysis of agricultural enterprises. The publications were peer-reviewed and carried a Virginia Cooperative Extension designated publication number.

The State of Rural Virginia

This series began in 1992 and was subsequently published occasionally with graphs and charts depicting economic trends and conditions affecting rural Virginia.