|
Rural Virginia
has problems.
Young people are leaving, farms and businesses are
failing, unemployment is rising faster than in most
urban areas. None
of this is news, of course, and it’s not unique to
Virginia. But the situation in the last couple of years has gone from bad
to worse.
Which brought us to the Rural
Development Summit in
Charlottesville
on September 24. Can government do anything? About two hundred
state and local government-types were in attendance
to fret about rural problems. Virginia Tech was on
the program, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture
was well represented. A foundation called the Canaan
Valley Institute and the folks charged with saving
rural tobacco country with millions of settlement
dollars had exhibits that demonstrated how much they
cared about rural Virginia.
In other words, it looked like a boring bunch
of bureaucrats wasting time and spending money. And
the two key speakers that morning made it clear they
were worried that nothing was really happening.
With a room full of Virginians whose jobs
touched upon rural development, the “issue” of
the meeting was “Does Virginia
need a State
Rural Development Council” — another state
agency? Last fall the General Assembly’s Rural
Virginia Prosperity Commission recommended that
something like this be formed.
The
C-ville meeting’s leadership pointed out
that some 40 other states have “rural development
councils,” most of them formed around the USDA-led
regional Resource Conservation and Development
Councils.
Virginia
needs one, too, it was argued.
Former life insurance salesman R. Steven Landes,
who now works as executive director of the
Shenandoah Valley Business Incubator and Technology
Center (a non-profit corporation), sounded sensitive
to concerns about more bureaucracy. “We do not
want just another state agency,” he told the
audience, but suggested that some kind of
organization was needed that “finds some money.”
The opinion of Landis, a delegate in the General Assembly and chairman
of the Rural Virginia Prosperity Commission,
carried weight with the audience.
Michael Schewel, who was a successful real
estate and corporate lawyer with a national
reputation until he became the Governor’s
Secretary of Commerce and Trade in January, echoed
Landes’ desire for worthwhile action from the
state. “What we are doing now is not working.”
Most current rural development efforts ignore
economic reality, Schewel said. He took a jab at the “farmland
preservation” forces by suggesting that real
estate development could address many of the issues
of rural development. “As productive value of
farmland has decreased, relative value of farmland
for commercial suburban development has grown. If
people can't make a living at farming or raising
timber....” He left it to the audience to fill in the
blank.
According to Schewel, rural
Virginia
businesses
won’t thrive by producing commodities, whether
gravel or grain, milk or meat. “More of those
classic rural enterprises are no longer needed in Virginia,” he
explained. Tremendous productivity gains in
manufacturing and in agriculture mean traditional
industries employ fewer people than they did in the
past.
Furthermore, rural areas face long odds in the
competition for manufacturing investment. In a
global economy, labor costs here are relatively high.
“The classic skills rural Virginia
has been
known for offering are not in demand. We’re now in
a knowledge-based economy, but we have rural
counties where 58 percent of the adult population
doesn’t have a high school diploma. That must
change,” Schewel said.
Schewel offered some specific suggestions
regarding how and where the state might focus its
resources, including:
Virginia
Tech Extension, seen by some as a leader in classic
rural development, was co-sponsor of the meeting. Ag
Economist Wayne Purcell has been tracking the
state’s rural economy for several years and the
research he presented drew a clear but complex
picture of a deteriorating economy.
With several graphs, Purcell illustrated
growing gaps between rural and urban per-capita
income and education.
For example,
Virginia’s 42 rural
counties now have per-capita incomes that are 50
percent lower than urban incomes and projected to
get
worse. Purcell pointed to numbers on income,
unemployment, educational achievement, and
population loss. He found particularly disturbing
the growing percentage of rural residents in poverty
or on welfare, and the number of young people who
are leaving rural areas.
Since the goal of the meeting was to form a
Virginia
rural
development council, we carefully read the handouts
which summarized the work of councils in other
states, searching for a clue of what we might
expect.
According to these National Rural Development
Partnership’s materials, rural development
councils rarely come up with specific money-making
schemes.
The eight-page, tiny-typeface write-ups of
other state programs mostly featured leadership
training, symposiums, staying on top of key issues,
conducting studies, addressing issues, being a
clearinghouse, partnerships, planning, seeking
resources, offering guidance, encouraging,
discussing, reviewing, assessing and so on. Colorado’s Rural
Development Council paid to have a
“value-neutral” play written and performed based
on interviews with rural youth.
We found only nine specific money-making
business development programs discussed out of the
40 states. Decide for yourself if any of these types
of ideas are worthwhile for Virginia:
-
Utah
spent $40,000 to provide local wood product
producers with training on how to work together
to access regional, national and international
markets. This included purchasing a small
diameter timber mill. The crafters also now have
a products and crafts store to consign their
products.
The rural development “leadership
challenge” in
Virginia
is finding where to focus. This isn’t Iowa, where you can get
many excited with a new idea for corn. Virginia
doesn’t
have
New England’s long tradition of local small manufacturing firms to build
upon either. Rural Virginia
has many different cultures, different resources and different
economics.
This diversity, however, gives Virginia’s
leadership a chance to lead. It will not be popular,
but selecting a few existing, struggling enterprises
with reasonable potential for success is what needs
to be done. We have high-placed political leaders
claim to bring business savvy to government. Good.
They can use it to make these tough calls on rural
development, saying “I’m sorry,” to most and
“get busy,” to a few.
--
October 14, 2002
|
