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Monday, May 12, 2008

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GROUPS THAT CHANGE COMMUNITIES

Rural Affairs Center

Center for Rural Affairs
Nancy L. Thompson
Box 406
Walthill, Neb. 68067
(402) 846-5428

Started 20 years ago as the outgrowth of a local community-action organization, the Center was founded by a pair of former VISTA volunteers in this tine Northeastern Nebraska farming town of 450. It was their idea to conduct studies of farm policy and then advocate for the implementation of the policies that they judged most effective; and they did this so successfully that they soon gained a national reputation as some of the nation's most advanced thinkers on farm and rural policy. They have dealt with issues as diverse as independent world banking, the structure of the hog industry, rural electric and water/sewage utilities, and the merits and disadvantages of center-pivot irrigation (the new practice that creates those round fields that look so strange from an airplane flying six miles over the Plains).

"The Center's purpose is to provoke public thought about social, economic and environmental issues affecting rural America, especially the Midwest and Plains regions," according to its annual report. "These regions blend in Nebraska to give the state its special place in American agriculture."

Operating with an $800,000 annual budget and a staff of 20, the center would be a major factor in rural poverty policy if it did nothing else; among its most significant victories was Initiative 300, a Nebraska constitutional amendment, tested in the Supreme Court, which limits corporate farming in Nebraska to corporations owned by famlies who actually work the land. "It's the best in the nation," Ralston said with pride.

But in addition to the policy studies, which continue, the Center has also begun a series of hands-on projects aimed at bringing people, life and vitality back to Nebraska's farms and small towns. The projects are models, they work, and in some ways they are literally unique.

The LAND LINK program is aimed at nothing less than ensuring that Nebraska's farms will continue in the hands of working farmers, countering the rapid depopulation of the Plains. It does this through a remarkably simple but effective process:

First, identify young people who would like to enter farming, and older people who are considering selling their farms but would like to pass them on to people who would continue operating them as family farms.

Then, train the young people to become effective farmers, giving them agricultural techniques and good business practices.

Finally, help the new farmers and the old land owners meet, negotiate and work out financial arrangements to transfer the property that gives the original owners a fair deal while helping the young people overcome the barriers of limited credit and equity. (This may range from the original owner agreeing to carry part of the mortgage or forgo a down payment to creative arrangements in which the new owner begins working the farm on a salary basis, with part of that salary going into a fund to build a down payment.)

Incredibly, the plan is already working. More than 800 people from all over the country, attracted by publicity as widespread as ABC and CBS News and major farming magazines, have expressed interest, and about 200 of them have been entered into the Center's computer database as definite prospects. About 80 farm owners have expressed interest in being matched with appropriate candidates, and 40 of them have advanced to database listing. Since the program started a little over a year ago, 14 matches have actually been put together, and four more are in progress. That's 18 farms remaining at work that might otherwise have gone fallow or been added to agribusiness complexes; and more, apparently, are on the way.

The Rural Enterprise Assistance Project (REAP) is a Grameen-bank type microenterprise-development project, and, although it's quite new, it may have the strongest prospects of any program of its type that I've seen, in part because of certain variations that the Center has introduced here, and in part because of the nature of its clientele. Unlike the other Grameen models I've visited in inner-city Chicago and in very poor regions of Arkansas and North Carolina, REAP benefits from being centered in an area where private enterprise and self-employment are an integral part of the culture, and where the goal of a microenterprise fund is not to raise people up from poverty but simply to keep them from falling into poverty, a somewhat less fearful challenge, Severens says.

REAP's first act of genius is that it requires each "small business association" or group of borrowers to raise money within its own community. For every dollar that the borrowers raise from local businesses, banks and institutions, the Center matches it with $3 (from an endowment funded by the Ford Foundation, C.S.Mott Foundation and the Small Business Administration). This procedure binds the association to its community and gives the community a stake in its success.

Unlike many Grameen models, which restrict membership in an association to a small core of committed members, REAP solicits a larger group (up to 15 members) and encourages each association to consider taking in new members as time goes by. It also skips the usual procedure of limiting loans to one member at a time, allowing as many members to take small loans at a time as need them. The program is fairly new. Its seven small business associations (with 75 members from 20 communities in Eastern Nebraska) have made a total of 19 loans totaling $23,000, to businesses ranging from a crafts shop to a lawn mowing service. But with ample money in the loan fund and strong efforts under way to increase its reach to more communities across the state, REAP hopes to have $100,000 in capital out on loans over the next year.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.
Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.
Send him E-mail.
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