Farmshoring: An untapped opportunity
By Ashley Hopkins, contributing writer
Posted on October 9, 2006

Farmshoring, a process by which jobs or contracts are outsourced to rural areas where business can be conducted at lower costs, has become a topic of study at Virginia Tech.

Tech’s Office of Economic Development and the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning have partnered with state and local governments to analyze the opportunities and barriers with regard to farmshoring possibilities in rural Virginia.
 
Known as the Economic Development Studio, this team of faculty and second-year graduate students will conduct qualitative research and work with statistics to investigate the potential of farmshoring in Virginia, said John Provo, senior economic development specialist with the Office of Economic Development at Tech.

The project, which lasts one semester, is run as a practicum, providing hands-on learning experience for those involved, Provo said.  Students contact and deal with clients from eight different partnership communities and use the information gained during their months of research and analysis to prepare a report on farmshoring opportunities for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

 An aspect of the study that could affect JMU students is study director Jeffrey Anderson’s plan to develop a program that will try to market rural Virginia communities in Harrisonburg, Blacksburg, Danville and Lynchburg. This development could shift some back-office operations to lower cost areas.

According to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, all four of these cities contain four-year colleges, and with many students in need of jobs, it could be a source of potential employment.

“A good percentage of [students] go where the jobs are, which is Northern Virginia,” Provo said, and added farmshoring could lead to increased job opportunities in the communities where they live while school is in session.
 
Besides the benefits farmshoring offers college students looking for jobs, it provides an alternative to the high cost of living in metropolitan areas, which can be 70 percent more expensive than rural areas, according to Wikipedia.org.

Farmshoring can help rural communities secure jobs and build tax bases while providing urban communities an opportunity to combat traffic congestion common in many urban areas.

Farmshoring could provide an opportunity for rural Virginia to see an increase in both job and tax revenue that it has lost to overseas competitors. Thus, firms that previously off-shored some of their business functions internationally are bringing them back to rural areas within the United States.

With 3 million jobs expected to go overseas in the next few years, farmshoring could be beneficial for those looking to find employment outside of urban areas.