CHUCK HASSEBROOK - Center for Rural Affairs
A Better Future for Rural Communities

The 2007 farm bill can be the tool by which America achieves genuine opportunity for rural people, a better future for rural communities and protection of our land and water.

It is time to act. Per capita income in the farm dependent counties of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and the Dakotas is less than three fourths of income in the region’s metropolitan counties. Poverty rates are more than half again as high.

To create a better future for rural people and communities, the next farm bill must respect four fundamental principles.

1. Societies and communities in which income, wealth, and power are more equitably distributed are generally healthier than those in which they are highly concentrated.

That is documented by the research of Dean MacCannell, who wrote:

All the serious studies reach the same conclusion. As farm size and absentee ownership increase, social conditions in the local community deteriorate. We have found depressed median family incomes, high levels of poverty, low education levels, social and economic inequality between ethnic groups associated with land and capital concentration in agriculture.... Communities surrounded by farms that are larger than can be operated by a family unit have... a few wealthy elites, a majority of poor laborers, and virtually no middle class.

It’s a simple fact. Communities and nation’s function better when many people– not just a privileged few– have a stake. People able to share fairly in the life of the community and gain a stake in its future are generally more likely to work to perpetuate the community than those without a reason to care. Enabling people to gain ownership of productive assets and exercise control over their work and lives is good for everyone.

2. Healthy communities contribute to healthy societies.

The bonds and mutual obligations people form with others over time are a form of social capital. Without community, people are more likely to act according to their selfish-interest and less likely to act in pursuit of the common good.

Only within community is there a reasonable expectation that unselfish behavior will be reciprocated. In addition, the constraints on negative behavior and the social pressure for positive behavior are much greater within community.

No nation can be strong if its people act solely on the basis of their selfish interests. By strengthening communities, the next farm bill can strengthen America.

3. The opportunity to exercise creativity and control over one’s own destiny lends meaning to life and work.

Correspondingly, the opportunity to be self-employed and assume ownership, control and responsibility over our own work provides a strong basis for fulfillment and brings meaning to life and work.

It is can also bring young people to rural America. Our surveys of rural northeast Nebraska youth found that half would like to own their own farm or business. The next farm bill should help them realize their dreams in rural America by supporting family size farms and self employment opportunities

4. Current and future generations rely on the land and water for survival. Thus, society has an obligation to share in the cost of its protection.

The next farm bill should recognize that by rewarding farmers and ranchers who practice good environmental stewardship. Congress should not make the mistake of only paying those who abuse the environment to change. That places the nation’s best environmental stewards at a competitive disadvantage in competing for land. Its ultimate outcome is to shift landownership toward those who care little about stewardship and practice it only when paid.

CRITICAL ELEMENTS OF THE NEXT FARM BILL

In recognition of these fundamental principles, the next farm bill should include four key elements.

1. Payment limitations – Until farm program payments to mega farms are capped, government will do at least as much to help mega farms drive family farms out of business by bidding land away from them as it does to help family farms. And as long as we squander billions on mega farms, there will be little money left to invest in programs that offer a future to rural America.

2. Invest in entrepreneurship – Most new jobs in the most rural counties are in non farm self employment. Yet, the federal government invests little in rural small business development. The next farm bill should change that. It should also support on-farm entrepreneurship through beginning farmer programs and value added programs targeted to small and mid size farms.

3. Conservation Security Program – The farm bill must have a strong conservation title that rewards good stewardship year in and year out. The Conservation Security Program is the foundation on which to build.

4. Support Community Initiative – New programs are needed to help communities help themselves through leadership and entrepreneurial development. Support is also needed for community initiatives to use access to a restored environment as a development asset.

Chuck Hassebrook is Executive Director and Rural Policy Program Director of the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska. Visit www.cfra.org.


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This article was published in the Winter 2005 issue of Catholic Rural Life©. No portion of this article may be reproduced without written permission from The National Catholic Rural Life Conference. To purchase the Winter 2005 issue of Catholic Rural Life, please contact The National Catholic Rural Life Conference office at 4625 Beaver Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50310-2199, call (515) 270-2634, or e-mail ncrlc@mchsi.com. The cost is $2.50 an issue plus postage and handling.