Indiana Agriculture Insider

This month, the Indiana State Department of Agriculture  hired Andrew Carty as the director of the economic development division.

Carty grew up in Arkansas where he worked for a USDA Certified Organic produce farm, ran an urban agriculture program for a local municipality and enjoyed spending time on his grandparent’s farm raising beef cattle. He is a graduate of Hendricks College, where he received a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies. Carty went on to receive a master’s degree from Indiana University in public affairs, specializing in environmental policy and economic development.

Prior to ISDA, Carty directed the Central Indiana Small Business Development Center hosted by Butler University in partnership with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and the U.S. Small Business Administration. While there, his team served almost 1000 clients, helping them generate over $30M in capital infusion and helping over 70 pre-venture entrepreneurs transition to business ownership. In addition, Carty consulted nationally as a leader within the Economic Development Practice at Thomas P. Miller and Associates where he supported community policy and strategy development locally, regionally and at the state levels.

As the director of economic development for the department, Carty will be responsible for managing staff and overseeing economic focus areas, such as, agritourism, biofuels, hardwoods, the Indiana Grown program, international trade and livestock. He will manage a variety of projects and will encourage agribusiness expansion, attraction and retention for the state.

He will also be a liaison to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and will support Director Kettler who is the director of agribusiness development for the IEDC.

Carty is an avid outdoorsman and has a passion for urban agriculture. He resides in Indianapolis with his wife, Hannah.

Visit www.isda.in.gov for more information on the Economic Development Division.

A partnership between Indiana Grown and Purdue University has developed into a grant for nearly $200,000 through the USDA’s Federal State Marketing Improvement Program. This grant seeks to improve economic impact for agriculture producers and agribusinesses across the state.

Indiana Grown, Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Purdue will use the funding to determine consumer awareness of locally grown products and how to best obtain them. They will also identify the benefits of being an Indiana Grown member and use consumer and producer data to determine the impact of the Indiana Grown program.

Michael Wilcox, assistant director and program leader for Purdue Extension’s Community Development program and extension specialist in the Department of Agricultural Economics will oversee the research portion of the study and is excited to get started.

The team will develop an economic model to scientifically evaluate the current economic impacts of a state branding initiative, like Indiana Grown, both at a regional and state-level.

This research will also develop a quantitative study of consumer and producer awareness and attitudes toward locally made and grown products, said Nicole Olynk Widmar, professor and associate head at Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Economics.

Upon completion, the findings will be shared with public and private stakeholders in Indiana, other similar state programs, and used as the basis for scholarly outputs to inform future research and programming by Indiana Grown and Purdue Extension.