Sarah Low

About

Dr. Sarah Low has been serving as professor and head of the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics in the College of ACES at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since August 2022. Prior to this role, she held the Fred V. Heinkel Chair in Agriculture within the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Missouri. Before beginning her academic career, Dr. Low spent ten years at the USDA’s Economic Research Service in Washington, D.C. Her research and Extension work emphasize supporting and facilitating regional economic development, with a focus on policy-relevant issues informed by her federal government experience. She conducts research and outreach in areas related to agricultural and rural development policy in the U.S., including broadband internet access and adoption, business dynamics and survival, financial capital availability, value-added agriculture, spatial analysis, and entrepreneurship as a rural economic development strategy. Dr. Low grew up in rural Scotland and was inspired by the prospect of economic mobility in the U.S., which motivated her interest in improving rural livelihoods through research and policy. Her first job after graduate school was in the economic research division at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, within their Center for the Study of Rural America. She is a Fellow of the Regional Science Association International and has held leadership roles such as immediate past-chair of the North American…

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Business
• Marketing
• Environmental economics
• Telecommunications
• Demographic economics
• Finance
• Agricultural economics
• Economic growth

Selected publications

• A qualitative assessment of farmer director skills in agricultural cooperatives

  The International Food and Agribusiness Management Review · 2023-06-22 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Agricultural cooperatives in the United States are larger and more complex than ever before. Due to this growth, farmer directors need to up-skill to maximize farmer member benefits. Director education is generally considered a successful strategy for improving financial and strategic performance, yet little research has examined the skills U.S. agricultural cooperative directors need. This research identified skills – and, notably, behaviors – necessary for agricultural cooperative dir…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Skills Gap Analysis of Farmer Directors of US Farmer Cooperatives

  Agribusiness · 2024-11-19 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Boards of directors are vital to firm performance and are an integral part of the decision‐making process of any business. Several studies have been conducted that observe corporate or nonprofit board characteristics, skills, and the board's connection to firm performance. In the cooperative space, the literature has focused on exploring the impact directors have on governance and policy. Only a few studies have examined director skills. The present study adds to this literature by iden…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vendor Types, Attendance, Experience and Sales 2019–2021: Evidence From Five Rural Oregon Farmers Markets

  Agribusiness · 2025-05-14 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT Farmers markets provide a direct‐to‐consumer marketing path for farmers and small businesses, facilitating customer discovery and product refinement. This paper explores farmers markets as a business incubator, with a focus on beginning vendors and resilience to a shock, namely, COVID‐19 market restrictions. We investigate how vendor sales vary by the type of products a vendor sells (farm products, processed food, and crafts/art), their attendance, market experience and the presence of…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Editorial

  Global challenges & regional science. · 2025-03-01 · 1 citations

  editorialOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Broadband technologies : a primer on access and solutions

  MOspace Institutional Repository (University of Missouri) · 2021-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  "Access to high-speed internet, or broadband, encourages equitable distance-learning, remote-work, quality-of-life and entrepreneurial opportunities. Te COVID-19 pandemic not only reinforced but also elevated the importance of household access to high-speed internet. Tis primer provides background information about current issues related to broadband access -- both availability and adoption. It defnes often-used broadband terminology, discusses the pros and cons of diferent broadband technologie…

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Dawn Thilmany

  25 shared

• Elizabeth Canales

  Mississippi State University

  16 shared

• Kathryn A. Boys

  North Carolina State University

  16 shared

• Catherine Isley

  Contextual Change (United States)

  11 shared

• Stephan Weiler

  8 shared

• Anders Van Sandt

  8 shared

• Stephen J. Vogel

  8 shared

• Tessa Conroy

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  7 shared

Education

• PhD, Agricultural and Consumer Economics

  University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

• Public Service and Administration in Agriculture, Sociology

  Iowa State University

• M.S., Agricultural Economics

  Purdue University

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Sandy Dall'Erbah-28
• David S. Bullockh-25
• Mary Arends-Kuenningh-22