Posted on 07/03/2021 6:12:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
Many argue rural America has been in steady decline for decades. It was particularly hard hit by the “Great Recession of 2007-09,” according to a 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Task Force on Agricultural and Rural Prosperity, which was created by Executive Order in April of 2017.
The report found that rural Americans working in agriculture still lacked access to electronic connectivity, technology-oriented jobs, and businesses that otherwise improve quality of life in metro areas. The effects of the Great Recession, the report concluded, “still permeate throughout rural life, particularly for communities with high poverty rates, low educational attainment, and high unemployment.”
The stresses on an already stressed rural America were exacerbated by the lockdowns imposed during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020-21, as numerous reports (here, here, and here, for example) confirm.
Responding to this crisis, an Indianapolis-based consulting firm has launched the "Prosperity Through Equity" project with a “Rural America Tour”-formatted survey intended to create a national snapshot of the impact of the pandemic on rural American communities. Their hope is that multitudes will fill out the survey and join in this energetic undertaking.
Thomas P. Miller & Associates (TPMA), which has served clients in over 40 states and has employees in 13, seems well positioned to lead this project. TPMA spokesperson Andrea Hutchins stated that her company has worked for three decades to empower organizations and communities to reach their goals through strategic planning and partnerships that create positive, sustainable change.
The voluntary, anonymous Rural America Tour survey is intended as a collaborative approach to produce a body of information to be shared with think tanks and educational institutions – and the public. The survey seeks to identify community strengths, areas of need, and local recommendations for positive change. Results of the survey will be shared with thought leaders and researchers – and affected communities – to enhance research efforts to find solutions to rural community issues.
As Hutchins explains, “We are looking for places to have in-person discussions about the barriers to rural prosperity and ways to overcome them. We intend to use the data from these discussions in the survey report, which will be available to anyone. The more people who have access to the data, the better.” TPMA anticipates releasing its report on the survey in fall 2021.
According to TPMA president and CEO Tom Miller, “Rural communities are the backbone of America and drive our economy. We need to gain a better understanding of the real issues, not the assumed ones. We know there are communities who are doing truly innovative things to overcome. We want to learn from and hear from those communities.”
Miller says his company’s approach to economic development and community resiliency includes placing a high value on economic diversity, quality of place, resource alignment, and overall community vibrancy. TPMA’s data analysis is driven by research and community engagement, says Miller. This allows the firm to identify community vulnerabilities and craft customized, comprehensive strategies to capitalize on emerging opportunities.
The goal of the “Rural American Tour,” Miller wrote, is to foster the collaborative use of data and feedback to identify best practices and develop equitable policy initiatives that can result in long-term sustainable solutions. The project aims to pinpoint the top five most pressing economic development challenges in rural America and explore sustainable options in a hackathon or similar public forum. The goal is to provide future-minded rural communities with new energy and new tools for revitalization.
The survey focuses on 10 areas of community need, including access to broadband internet, healthy food, quality healthcare, mental health programs and support, quality K-12 education, reliable transportation, affordable quality housing, living-wage jobs, childcare, well-maintained community infrastructure (sidewalks, streets, parks, and playgrounds), and safe streets (crime prevention).
Four years ago, before the pandemic, the Task Force on Agricultural and Rural Prosperity recommended reforms to combat existing detriments in five “calls to action” – electronic connectivity, quality of life, support for the workforce, technological innovation, and economic development. The hoped-for result was to be “a rural America with world-class resources, tools, and support to build robust, sustainable communities for generations to come.”
The most critical factor, the one that provides the platform for all others, is surely access to high-speed, high-capacity internet. Connectivity enables many people to work from home, a vital element for most people considering relocating to or remaining in a rural area. But it’s even more important, as one federal official explained.
According to Douglas Wilson, Illinois state director of USDA Rural Development, “Electronic connectivity is more than an amenity – it connects households, schools, and healthcare centers to each other and to the rest of the world. It is a tool that enables increased productivity for farms, factories, forests, and small businesses. It is fundamental for economic development, innovation, advancements in technology, workforce readiness, and an improved quality of life.”
Both in the 2009 stimulus bill and in the 2020 pandemic legislation, the federal government has poured billions of dollars into states and communities to improve access to broadband internet, with much of that money earmarked for rural areas. But money alone does not ensure success, and the jury is still out on just how many communities are still with poor or nonexistent service.
That’s just one of the major issues facing rural America that the Prosperity Through Equity project seeks answers for. TPMA may have created the project, but the company believes that the data gathered and solutions uncovered through the hackathons and other brainstorming belong to everyone.
Yes, it is truly awful out here. City people should stay in their enclaves and enjoy their soy latte’s and Facebook lives in peace.
I don’t think I have seen so many leftist memes in a single article before........”in-person”, “collaborative”..all the Cloward-Piven buzzphrases.
Capitalism in the person of Elon Musk is already fixing the most pressing rural need...high speed connectivity. The rest will follow.
Some of these things are ridiculous for rural areas.
Sidewalks, seriously? Where, down some lonely country road or highway? The concrete costs would be better spent just PAVING some roads, let alone putting in sidewalks nobody will walk on except coyotes and foxes.
And childcare already exists. It's called Grandma. Seriously, there are folks who set up small child care businesses in their homes with only a few kids, but unless there is a lot of families with young children packed into a small area (and then it's no longer rural), there is no need for this. Supply and demand rules.
Finally transportation. That's just so urban. What do these advocates want, light rail? Even a bus service needs passengers. How many will need such regular service that it would be profitable in the first place? Supply and demand once more. If there was a real need for such someone would already be doing it. It's called Uber and Lyft. If they're worried about poor rural people not being able to afford transportation, it would be cheaper to pay for their Uber than put in expensive buses (let me guess, electric, cause internal combustion bad) that nobody will ride.
“Many argue rural America has been in steady decline for decades.”
Translation: we (commies) don’t have control of rural areas yet...
OR
Democrats/leftists /commies are only half done...time to “rebuild” rural America ( now that they’ve torn it down.)
It is the idiotic city culture trying to impose city “one size fits all” ideas on rural folks. I am personally sick of it. Now they are taking down 4G towers without replacing it with 5G. We will soon have no phone service at all in the country. The one size fits all they assume just is not true at all, completely illogical. If they force us to all move to the city who is going to feed them?
And not one mention of confiscatory estate taxes and their effects on rural landowning families.
Absolutely. The left seems to be not-so-subtly moving towards collectivist farms, and we know how well that works.
The Prosperity of Wall Street IS NOT the definition of Prosperity out in the Heartland.
This rural county in MO had a higher population in the 1800s when mining was big. Most of the mines are tapped out with only lead mining left with one company, Due Run doing pretty much all of it. Once the mines were tapped out, population started slowly declining until the Great Depression when it became a rapid decline.
Most of the roads are gravel. We don't need sidewalks and we can all get DSL that's fast enough for web surfing or even streaming TV. We need factories. AG doesn't produce a lot of jobs. I'm in the Ozarks which is too hilly for crops so AG here is raising beef cattle. One person can manage hundreds of head. Hundreds of miles North, it's crop land and what do they grow? Corn and soybeans and one person with a high tech tractor can manage hundreds of acres.
Trade with china and the advent of walmart was the final nail in the rural coffin. The new career goal for poor people in rural USA is to get on disability.
to foster the collaborative use of data and feedback to identify best practices and develop equitable policy initiatives that can result in long-term sustainable solutions.
Sat do what? townhall article.
And no mention of churches or God. Is that because a community does not need God or churches, or that small town rural areas already have that?
The rest of the list sounds something a community organizer would put together for any urban neighborhood. They left out grocery stores, which are commonly missing in poor urban areas. ("Food deserts")
(leftist keywords)
Prosperity Through Equity
strategic planning
partnerships
sustainable change
collaborative
information to be shared with think tanks and educational institutions
community resiliency
high value on economic diversity
develop equitable policy
revitalization
mental health programs
sustainable communities
Rural areas aren’t buying what they’ve been selling and are self-sufficient enough they don’t have to.
The “Great Recession” began when Pelosi was given the gavel. The current downturn is a direct result of putting that disgusting old crone back in power.
Democrats want to Stalinize the Kulaks.
I agree with all the criticisms of this particular initiative in this thread.
HOWEVER....having grown up in (very) rural America, and lived in one of America’s largest cities, and lots of in between....I do think that the notion of a Rural Renaissance is sound, and timely, and important.
Understood that the lingo in this article is not the way to go.
But would anyone care to discuss what a real rural renaissance could consist of? And how to promote it?
I think that’s a really important idea
We're not well off. We live on SS. Everything we own is paid for. No debt. What money we do make off selling the calves every year is used to pay the property taxes. Our house is new but we have spent 10 years building all of the infrastructure of a farm out of our pocket. Fences, water lines for stock tanks, barns, corrals, tractors and trailers and other equipment need to run a cattle farm. Start up costs that couldn't be avoided. and will take years and years to recoup. It's a messy business with all of those cow pies and manure everywhere.
Surprisingly we do have modern conveniences like electricity, running water, indoor toilets, kitchen appliances, washer and dryer, air conditioner, TV and high speed internet. We both drive beat up, paint-fading 15 year old used cars. But we also have the railroad train with earshot and the busy, noisy highway that runs in front of the house. Also the local 4,000 foul-smelling milk cow dairy next door. It's not all smelling like roses and keeping up with the Jones' out here.
It's amazing how poor, old country folk can even exist, let alone survive, in rural America without all the latest "things" big city people are used to. No fancy restaurants, no nightclubs or bars, no shopping malls, no concert halls, no movie theaters, no sports venues, no traffic congestion, no commute, no local police or sheriff but no crime. It's downright inconvenient and unfair that there is no Starbucks in sight.
But despite all of this, we wouldn't want to give those disgruntled urban folks any ideas that living in the country is any fun. It can be downright boring. And lonely. So if they are thinking of make the transition from big city to rural, think again. It's not all it's cut out to be.
Written with tongue planted firmly in cheek. 😂
Here in my VERY rural part of Lower Alabama, we have churches everywhere. In some places, you'll see as many small churches, often small cinder block buildings, as you do houses.
One thing we have here in the South but is not found in the rest of the country is rural black folks.
These are actually remnant descendants of black slaves on huge mega plantations. Some plantations had 3-5000 slaves, and one white family with a few white overseers. Many of the white patriarchs and sons fought as Confederates and were killed.
The rest of the family just left, and sometimes the Yankees burned down the main house.
So what happened to the slaves once they were freed? Nothing. They stayed on the land and began sharecropping.
Over the years, small sharecropping became very inefficient versus modern mechanized agriculture. Nobody picks cotton by hand anymore.
Starting around WWI, many of these black folks moved North to the big cities for jobs and are part of the big city ghetto/poor culture.
Those remaining are all mostly on welfare because there are no jobs, not even in agriculture.
It doesn't really make sense to bring factories and other type of jobs to these places because it is not profitable for a business to take on all the risk of doing so.
I think the government subsidizing such industry in these places RATHER than welfare would do much, much more for these folks.
Still, rural areas will NEVER be industrial because there isn't enough people.
You can't make Selma or Tuskegee into the next Pittsburgh or Silicon Valley--that's never going to happen.
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