The Secret to Creating Vibrant Rural Economies

On August 29, I joined six Virginians who focus on rural development in at a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) “Rural Investment Roundtable” in Blacksburg, Virginia. Our goal was to explore what’s working in rural southwest Virginia, how federal and state governments can make their programs more effective and user-friendly, and how farmers, entrepreneurs and the public can get involved. The roundtable, attended by about 60 people, was sponsored by the USDA’s Rural Development office and organized with help the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), which I direct.

The Blacksburg gathering followed on a roundtable held Tucson, Arizona, on August 27, and preceded one on September 25 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Similar events are in the planning stages around the country, but no dates have been set.

The Rural Investment Roundtable in Virginia featured presentations on revitalization success stories by: 

• Roger Fraysier, Chairman of the Scott County Telephone Cooperative, a member-owned utility provider that services 5,594 lines, described how they achieved universal broadband access for county residents, despite the challenging Appalachian mountain terrain. Scott County, population 21,576, is one of Virginia’s whitest and most rural counties. It is also one of the poorest, with 20 percent of its people living in poverty.
• Kathlyn Terry, CEO of the nonprofit Appalachian Sustainable Development told how the Appalachian Harvest Food Hub is helping small farmers in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio, who were once dependent upon tobacco, to sell locally-raised produce and meat. The Hub’s refrigerated 18-wheelers ship food to buyers in nine states, the five mentioned above, along with West Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia. The group also distributes 1,500 to 2,000 food boxes each week to about 40 regional food pantries.
• Bryan Ailey is Vice President of People Incorporated of Virginia, a nonprofit agency that provides about 30 public services that are designed to “give people a hand up, not a hand out.”  He discussed how the group has repurposed abandoned schools and other unused buildings, as well as built new housing, to create more than 11,000 units of affordable housing. 
• Katie Commender, Agroforestry Director at Appalachian Sustainable Development,  and John Munsell, a forest management extension specialist at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, and the director of Appalachian Forest Farmer Coalition, explained how local people with a few acres of woodlands can raise and sell high value forest products—without harvesting timber—through Appalachian Harvest Herb Hub. The hub’s Point-of-Harvest program works with 74 wild harvesters and dealers of forest roots, herbs and barks, and helps them grow, process, sell and market Point-of-Harvest certified medicinal herbs.
• Kevin Byrd, Executive Director of the New River Valley Commission, a regional development entity, spoke about helping bring Amtrak service to Christiansburg, a town of 22,500 south of Blacksburg in Montgomery County, Virginia. For the first time since 1979, passenger rail will return to that region of the state, with service scheduled to begin later in the decade.

For too long, the mainstream media has painted small towns and the countryside as dismal and hopeless. By lifting up the extraordinary work being done by local innovators—like those who spoke in Blacksburg—the USDA’s Rural Investment Roundtables showcase a different rural narrative, one that acknowledges our problems but focuses attention on the bottom-up solutions that have emerged, often with the federal government as a partner. 

Attendees were surprised and encouraged by the breadth and impact of the work being done in Virginia. Patricia Austin of Wythe County came to the Blacksburg roundtable in hopes of learning how to make her 57 acres of farm and woodlands more productive. She was particularly excited to learn about the Appalachian Harvest Herb Hub and “the innovative techniques that are going to move farming in our area into the next century.”

Ann Norris, a member of the board of directors of MOVA Technologies in Pulaski, Virginia, was also encouraged to hear about the funding opportunities available to groups in southwest Virginia.  Norris, a chemist, works with MOVA Technologies to remove ammonia and carbon dioxide from large chicken production facilities and channel it to the production of vegetables in repurposed buildings.

As someone who has been involved in community development work around the country for more than 30 years, I know it is essential to magnify success stories like these in order to build public support for the programs that made that success possible and to ensure that rural communities remain a priority for federal agencies and future administrations.

At the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative that’s one of our goals. Changing the narrative begins with building public awareness about the progress being made and how rural communities are leading it. Local people can solve most of their own problems, especially when the government invests in locally-driven strategies, rather than imposing top-down, cookie cutter programs. Maybe eventually, influential economists like Paul Krugman will stop with the despair and take note.

Anthony Flaccavento

Anthony Flaccavento is co-founder and Executive Director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative.