Metrics from the Field: Learning How To Multiply

Abstract

First paragraphs:

As I work across the country, I often get asked by local economic officials, or potential investors, what the economic impact would be if investments were made in community-based food activity.

This seems like one of the right questions to ask, but it is typically asked for the wrong reasons. First of all, in most communities the economic impact can be estimated fairly easily by knowing the amount of locally produced food that will be consumed by local people. Typically, especially when few firms are locally owned, all that is needed is to multiply these sales figures by 1.3 to get a reasonable minimum estimate of overall impact. This is a typical multipler measurement in an industrial farm community. A tribal reservation might be much lower, 1.1 or less.