USDA/RD should not act like bank loan officers. That’s not their mission and the good state RD offices don’t act that way.

The idea of funding the Rural Development Councils is great and should be pursued. But it will require new legislation and appropriations. President Obama can change the criteria for training, evaluation and hiring in USDA/RD immediately without any new legislation.

Mr. Kittley is right that many community organizers don’t know beans about production agriculture. Fortunately, there are many non-governmental organizations that know both organizing/facilitation and production agriculture. These are the sorts of organizations which could provide training and evaluation to help USDA/RD move forward.

Neither Zimbabwe or Ukraine are fortunate enough to have programs such as the USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grant program which helps farmers create and own marketing and processing businesses. Just focusing on production is not enough to make farms sustainable. Farmers must join together to own the marketing and processing system.

I’ve witnessed first-hand the problems of both Zimbabwe and Ukraine as I helped farmers develop new processing and marketing businesses. Stagnant bureaucracies mostly stand in the way of such ventures in those countries.

The new Administration has a chance to shake up the stagnant bureaucracies in some of our states. Let’s work together to facilitate sustainable rural development in every state.

My wife and I have built a business on training and technical assistance to the rural areas using deliberation and dialogue within a planning framework. I have also worked with some of the entities that work with Rural Development in administering some of their rental housing programs.

All this being said, Rural Development is a good agency that needs to have a understanding that planning and technical assistance to communities and groups is groundwork well laid. Not all improvement can be measured in bricks and morter projects. Leadership development is lacking in rural areas because of the population decline and the graying of rural areas. New avenues need to be developed to address the global economy and its effects on the rural areas.

Rural Development Councils are a great vehicle that are in place and need to be fully funded. The Nebraska Rural Development Commission should be the model. It was created and funded initially by then Governor now Sen. Ben Nelson. It was inclusive and very effective in gaining a single vision of the development of business and community in Nebraska, both rural and urban. However, the councils are different in every state and operate under different philosophies and leadership. This can be a problem in that there is not clear consensus on policies and directions.

We can no longer afford not to have some type of technical assistance available to our communities. It is essential for commmunity sustainability and entreprenureship development.

Frank Spillers

My family has farmed in Texas for almost 120 years. And before that in Alabama, we were burned out of Alabama after the Civil War during reconstruction.

What does a community organizer know about production. NOTHING!

More central planning. We do not need another beauracry.

I can see a real model developing, like it did in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. They confiscated the farms from the old families who developed them, and turned them over to their political supporters(war veterans). Now they cannot feed themselves and their economy is totally destroyed.

It happened before in the Ukraine. They starved the producers into subjection also.

The wonder of central planning is a true disaster.

Do we really want to go there?

I am also a communty organizer with 30 years of field experience and currently serve as director of Maine Rural Partners, our state rural development council. The state rural development councils (there were 35 in 2004) are a critical piece of the organizing infrastructure, were an unfunded portion of the 2002 farm bill and were orphaned by Rural Development (our cognizang agency) because we are independent and cannot be controlled by RD. But organizers need to take their instructions from the bottom up, not the top down. Do we want rural organizing to be subject to political control of a federal agency? I don’t think so. But we do need a long term solid commitment so that capacity can be built.

The state RD councils need to be funded and a LOT more money needs to be available for organizing work to move rural America toward sustainable prosperity. I believe this could be better accomplished by getting funding to RD councils and other NGO’s than adding fedeal employees who are hard to dislodge if mediocre at their jobs. Current field offices are stretched as many new programs have been added to administer without more staff. So existing positions could not just be retooled in any event w/o finding a new way to administer existing programs.

I very much appreciate this timely discussion and look forwad to reading other viewpoints.

These are excellent recommendations! Coming from an organizing background, you have really nailed the criteria for leadership in Rural Development. We need people who know how to organize people and to get work done – a major shift from what bureaucracies normally do.

Denise O’Brien