Page 109 - Farm Bill Series_The 7 Things You Should Know

Fluharty pushed for a regional approach to rural development, where not every community wins
independently but communities within a region win collectively. Testifying before the House
Committee on Agriculture, he had outlined a plan for moving USDA toward a Regional Rural
Innovation framework, based on three core tenets:

• It should center upon rural innovation, entrepreneurship, collaboration and strategic
investments.
• It must incent public, private and philanthropic investment cooperation, and build
regional frameworks for action.
• Special attention must be given to diversity, gender, poverty and immigration concerns.

In several states, farm leaders were already embracing the important interdependence between
farm and rural.

In 2006, the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation launched “Renew Rural Iowa,” to provide education,
mentoring, recognition, connections and financing for rural entrepreneurs.

“Nearly 90 percent of Iowa’s farmers rely on off-farm income, so it’s important to
encourage entrepreneurs as well as helping existing businesses grow,” said IFBF President
Craig Hill in a release noting the 10-year anniversary of the program. “Encouraging small
businesses helps maintain young families in rural Iowa, which keeps schools alive and Main
Street open, which is integral to Iowa’s rural heritage.”

At the national level, the American Farm Bureau Federation was coming to the same conclusion.
After studying rural development issues, then-AFBF President Bob Stallman said his
organization gained a better understanding about the importance of investing in rural America.

“Our study showed that, for the business of agriculture, rural America was more important to
agriculture than agriculture was to rural America, in terms of economics,” Stallman explained.

“The light bulb went on that we needed to focus more on rural development and
infrastructure issues because, at the end of the day, that was going to allow agriculture to
be more successful than it was otherwise.”

That led to AFBF adding a full-time staff member to address rural development issues in 2008.
They could not have found a more passionate rural advocate in their first hire.

Sabrina Matteson, the American Farm Bureau
Federation’s director of rural affairs, understood
that rural development was a relatively small part
of the whole farm bill, but it was still significant.

Rural development is really important because it
makes our country a more secure nation,” said
Matteson shortly after being hired. “We are very
productive agriculturally. We can feed ourselves
and there aren’t very many countries that can make
that claim. Most of the food for our country comes

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