Folks,
I’m sure many of you heard these two stories on NPR this weekend. For those of you who missed them, I’ve Fair Used them below.
I took note of the following: “[Obama] pledged to hold a “rural summit” and deliver a package of rural initiatives to Congress in his first 100 days as president.” Does anyone know more about this apparently planned rural summit? If it’s going to happen in time for Obama to have a legislative package ready in the first 100 days, then it’s gotta be in full planning swing already.
Here’s what I think: Rural affairs are about a lot more than agriculture and agriculture (and the food it produces) are about a lot more than rural affairs. So I propose we try and urge the Obama administration to hold two, parallel and simultaneous summits, in Washington DC– one for rural issues and the other for food and agriculture issues.
Why? Because while agriculture is intimately involved with rural America, it doesn’t define rural America in the 21st century and, increasingly, agriculture is becoming an urban issue as well (urban agriculture, development encroachment on farmland, food security, etc.) and food affects us all.
What do y’all think? Do others feel like you have energy to make a push for twin summits?
Chrys Ostrander
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Rural America To Obama: Remember Us
by Howard Berkes
Weekend Edition Saturday, November 22, 2008 · Fifty million Americans live in the nation’s smallest and most remote places. Most of those who voted on Election Day chose Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who won rural counties by near-landslide proportions.
That has some wondering whether President-elect Barack Obama will pay much attention to rural issues.
“I think most rural Americans would be fearful of the possibility [Obama's] not really interested in them. He comes out of Chicago and is a big-city politician,” says James Gimpel, a professor of government at the University of Maryland and a native of rural South Dakota and Nebraska. “Rural Americans probably aren’t looking for a lot out of this administration. … They can see for themselves who won. And it didn’t seem to be rural America in this last election.”
Promises From The Candidate
But candidate Obama promised to focus attention on rural issues while campaigning in Iowa in October 2007. He pledged to hold a “rural summit” and deliver a package of rural initiatives to Congress in his first 100 days as president.
“What’s good for rural America will be good for America. The values that are represented … are values that built America, and we’ve got to preserve them,” Obama told a crowd in Amana, Iowa.
“He really propelled himself onto the national stage, in part, by campaigning for fundamental change in farm and rural policy in the state of Iowa,” notes Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs, a Nebraska-based advocacy group for small towns and small and family farms.
Iowa Democrats gave Obama his first presidential campaign victory. That win in the Iowa caucuses gave him legitimacy as a candidate.
The Truth About Rural Life
In public opinion surveys, most rural voters say they want the same things everyone else wants: prosperity, security and peace. But rural advocates are much more specific. And they want Obama to understand one key point about rural life.
“Reality … for most rural people is that farming is not how we make our living,” says Dee Davis of the Center for Rural Strategies, a Kentucky-based group that tries to attract attention to rural issues. “You’ve only got about 1 percent of rural America making their primary living on the farm. So what’s important is to think about those other 99 percent and what’s possible for them.”
Many rural Americans are challenged by a rural economy that tanked sooner and deeper than the nation’s economy. Thousands of rural manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. High energy prices have made food and long commutes more expensive. And most rural places are losing population.
So when the president-elect tackles rural recovery, he should first bridge the digital divide, says Debby Kozikowski of RuralVotes, a partisan group that campaigned for Obama.
“Internet access is not just for watching YouTube. It’s an instrument of commerce and education,” Kozikowski says.
In fact, rural areas lag behind cities and suburbs in access to broadband, making economic growth more difficult. Kozikowski also wants attention given to the basic infrastructure of asphalt and concrete. “Bringing us into the age of technology for new commerce and educational opportunity doesn’t mean anything if you can’t bring your product across a safe road or bridge.”
Both moves would help “overcome the friction of distance. Or overcome the costs that are associated with distance to these locations,” as Gimpel puts it. He wants the new administration to recognize something else fundamental about rural life: “Key to the rural economy really is the notion of self-employment. Self-employment is much higher in rural America than it is anywhere else,” he says.
Making Rural America Stronger
Gimpel has a relatively simple suggestion that could have a big impact on main streets losing small businesses: Cut the capital-gains tax for small-business owners. He cites his own parents and their Western-wear shop in Nebraska as an example. They were forced to inflate the selling price, he says, so they could pay the capital-gains tax and still have enough money for retirement.
“They sold it at a price that made it difficult for the purchaser to then operate the business at a profit while still servicing the debt,” Gimpel recalls. “Within a couple of years, that business on Main Street closed after 30 years. And this happened to a number of other businesses on the same block in the same town.”
Davis has something more sweeping in mind for rural policy.
He’s not expecting the same kind of help that Wall Street is receiving. “There’s not going to be a bailout for rural America,” Davis says. “That ship has long ago sailed.”
Instead, he believes rural places should become part of the national economic recovery plan. Davis foresees rural areas focused on the renewable energy and alternative fuels the nation seeks. He envisions new markets tying local farmers to towns and cities close by. He also proposes a system for rewarding rural areas financially if the market in “pollution credits” results in the construction of power plants that pollute rural skies.
“We don’t have to think of rural as a deficit. We can think of it as a strength,” Davis says. “We can think of it as the way to begin to reimagine our economy.”
President-elect Obama has yet to schedule a rural summit. His rural platform incorporated some of what rural advocates seek, including broadband and infrastructure upgrades, small-business support and a major role in the development of renewable fuels.
Now is the time to hold the president-elect to his promises, Hassebrook says. “It’s absolutely essential that he follow through with that as president.”
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How Will An Urban President Handle Farm Policy?
by Howard Berkes
Weekend Edition Sunday, November 23, 2008 · President-elect Barack Obama’s past as an urban community organizer in Chicago makes some wonder how he could relate to farmers, ranchers and other rural people.
“I think the concern would be that he doesn’t understand or would have much sympathy for their interests at all,” suggests James Gimpel, a professor of government at the University of Maryland. “And that rural Americans would not be a very high priority in an Obama administration.”
But as a senator, Obama represented Illinois, which has farm and rural regions, and his journey to the presidency began with a win in the Iowa Democratic caucus. And it was during a campaign stop in Iowa that Obama released a farm and rural platform in October 2007.
“If we are really serious, we can make sure that family farmers are supported, not just big agribusiness,” a casually-dressed Obama told a crowd in Amana, Iowa. “I think that we can make sure that subsidies are going to people who need it, not Fortune 500 companies.”
This is the kind of campaign rhetoric that some hope will evolve into policy.
Big Farms Vs. Small
“The most important thing the president could do is simply to stop subsidizing mega-farms that drive smaller operations out of business,” says Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs, a Nebraska-based advocacy group focused on small and family farmers.
Hassebrook wants a cap on the government payments made to farmers as part of the multibillion-dollar subsidy program. In his farm policy platform, candidate Obama included payment limits aimed at directing subsidies toward “family farmers.”
But dividing farms among big and small, or family and corporate, isn’t as simple as it seems, says Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau.
“Less than 2 percent of America’s farms are corporate, and many of those are family corporations,” Stallman notes. He calls the label “family farmer” an emotional statement. “I know family farms that farm 30,000 acres. The father and four sons have cattle interests, [a grain] elevator and it’s all one family operation.”
Stallman also says it’s important to remember who produces the bulk of the nation’s farm products.
“The larger farmers in this country produce 80 to 85 percent of all the food, fiber and fuel,” Stallman adds. “If you target policies only to small farmers, then you’re excluding the vast majority of agricultural production in this country and we don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Farm subsidies are supposed to keep food prices down and farmers and farm towns thriving. As costs have risen, farming has consolidated. Fewer farmers are working bigger farms. So subsidies are not achieving one goal of farm policy, says Dee Davis of the Center for Rural Strategies, a group that seeks attention to rural issues.
“The greatest out-migration in rural areas is [in] the places [which] get the highest agricultural subsidies,” Davis says. “The system is not working.”
It’s Not Just Farmers In Rural America
Davis also wants to trim subsidies for the biggest farmers and direct the money saved to rural economic development. That’s because agriculture is a relatively small part of the rural economy.
“Agriculture is a minority percentage of employment in rural America, and it has been [for] quite a long time,” says Gimpel of the University of Maryland. “There has been a lot of attention paid to agriculture because [farmers and agribusiness] have well-organized interest groups defending their interests.”
This clash between rural and farm interests is reinforced by the fact that the Department of Agriculture is responsible both for farm policy and rural economic development. And the Farm Bill funds both rural and farm programs.
“We’ve asked, in many respects, for the Farm Bill to be all things to rural America … when in fact the world has changed quite dramatically,” says Mark Drabenstott, an economist at the Rural Policy Research Institute and the University of Missouri. “We have to recognize that more and more of the things that we ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture to do are going to lie much farther beyond the farm gate.”
At the American Farm Bureau, Stallman acknowledges a diminished role for agriculture in rural life, but he wants to make sure President-elect Obama isn’t led astray.
“Some of those other groups are not taking into account production of food, fiber and fuel. And what that means for not only this country but other countries of the world,” Stallman maintains. “That’s where agricultural policy becomes really important so … you can’t just exclude agriculture out of that discussion.”
Stallman wants Obama to focus on limiting international barriers, such as tariffs, in agricultural trade. He wants a guest-worker program so that agribusiness can continue to employ migrant labor. And he wants a secretary of agriculture skilled in balancing competing interests.
Rural activists want an agriculture secretary willing to look beyond agribusiness. Debby Kozikowski is a Democratic activist in Massachusetts whose group, RuralVotes, campaigned for Obama in rural areas across the country.
Kozikowski hopes “he remembers that he said we need to have a Department of Agriculture not the Department of Agribusiness. … I’d like to see somebody who’s not married to one facet of rural life, but understands the full complement that we find in rural America today.”
Obama’s campaign platform included both rural and farm initiatives. The agricultural planks focused on family farms, “organic and local agriculture” and “independent farmers.” As a senator, Obama supported the 2008 Farm Bill, which won’t expire for another four years. But as president, Obama and his secretary of agriculture will be forced to contend with these competing farm and rural interests right away, as Congress and the administration try to figure out how to fund and administer the Farm Bill’s provisions.
This message originated from or was forwarded by:
Chrys Ostrander
Chrysalis Farm @ Tolstoy
Organic Micro-permaculture
33495 Mill Canyon Rd.
Davenport, WA 99122
509-725-0610
chrys@thefutureisorganic.net
http://www.thefutureisorganic.net
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