Category: Our Research Reports

The State of Freight Rail sums up the key relevant points of the The state of rail: Untangling the issues that you can download and print out.

This new brief on freight rail examines the role it plays in the state’s economy, and the complicated issues that go with it, including transportation costs for commodities and oil from North Dakota.

A study of four successful shared services projects around Greater Minnesota. The research looks at why local governments decided to collaborate, the challenges they faced, and what made these projects ultimately work.

The following brief summarizes the findings of the report Educational Interests, Needs and Learning Preferences of Immigrant Farmers. To read the full report by agricultural educator Thaddeus MacCamant, click here. The immigrant population is growing in rural Minnesota, and those who are interested in farming will be replacing a dwindling population of traditionally white farmers. ...

A discussion on the complex relationship between rural communities and our state’s most valuable resource by Marnie Werner, research director Andrew Hayes, research intern Can people who live in the land of 10,000 lakes really have a water problem? The city administrator of Worthington says yes, they can. Worthington, a community of 12,500, sits on ...

Transportation officials project that over the next two decades, the funds needed just to maintain Minnesota’s roads will fall at least $12 billion short. This policy brief discusses how that shortfall will show up on increasingly deteriorating rural roads.

Each year, the Center assembles the latest demographic and economic data to create the State of Rural Minnesota report. Most of the data used for the presentation can also be found at our Atlas of Minnesota Online. Click here to see the presentation.

Who owns rural Minnesota? On the surface, this seems like a fairly straightforward question, but scratch the surface, and it turns out to be a lot more complicated. Yes, farmers and people in towns and some companies and state and local government do own most of the land in rural Minnesota, just as they do ...

Rural Minnesota is losing it’s voice. That’s the conclusion of a study where researchers talked to 50 prominent Minnesota decision makers and surveyed 120+ more. Due to a combination of reasons, the state’s rural population is becoming increasingly left out and left behind on the discussions that affect our everyday lives. Finding the Voice of Rural ...