Economic Impacts of Agriculture in Eight Northeastern States

The objective of this report was to provide information to producers, policy makers, and other interested stakeholders on the both the agricultural producer perceived and data driven regulatory environment of Northeastern states. Notably the specific objectives were: Identify regulatory perceptions of Northeastern agricultural producers; quantify the regulatory environment via a data driven index computation; rank states within the Northeast as well as select comparable states throughout the United States; provide recommendations on the state level to lessen the regulatory burden for Northeastern states. Findings: Overall, agricultural producers in the Northeast indicated the number of regulations to be increasing since 2010. Furthermore, the amount of time and money spent on the regulations was also increasing. State regulations were found to have the most impact on producers changing their farming practices, followed by federal and to a lesser extent municipal regulations. Perceptions of regulatory impact are not always consistent with data driven indices. Several states ranking low on regulatory burden had a majority of agricultural producers perceiving there to be a high regulatory burden. In contrast, some states with a high burden had the perception of “just-right” or under-regulated. New Jersey was found to be the least regulated state while Maine and New Hampshire were the most regulated, according to this study’s calculations. It is important to note that these rankings are relative to the other states in this study. On the whole, Northeastern states were more regulated than comparison states from around the United States. Of the sixteen states in the regulatory index, five of the bottom six were in the Northeast. Northeastern states, in general, moved around in how well they performed in the different policy components. Some states scored well in tax policy regulation but low in labor while others did well in labor but scored poorly in environmental. Thus individual components are important to consider with respect to regulatory impact. Using the results from the report it is clear that each state has areas where they can improve their regulatory burden on agricultural producers. Some states need to focus on lessening the burden of taxes while others may need to focus on labor or environmental policies. Furthermore, this report does find support for the anecdotal evidence that Northeastern states by and large have more regulatory burdens than comparable states throughout the United States.