Developing Entrepreneurial Rural Communities

Rural communities in the United States have diversified and their dependence onagriculture has decreased substantially. In the 1980s, rural deindustrialization occurredand rural areas continued to become more service oriented: employment opportunitiesdeclined because of shifts in the world and U.S. economies, and anti-rural publicpolicies. In response, some rural communities have become entrepreneurial communities,whose characteristics include: healthy acceptance of controversy; a degree ofeconomic surplus to allow for risk-taking; willingness of community to tax itself tomaintain infrastructure and schools; the ability to define community broadly and tonetwork both vertically and horizontally to obtain resources; and dispersed communityleadership. Entrepreneurial behavior in the context of more favorable state and federalpolicies could help stabilize many rural communities

Book Review (Submitted by Cornelia Butler Flora) - Food and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing Agriculture in the Middle

Food and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing Agriculture in the Middle, Edited by Thomas A. Lyson, G.W. Stevenson, and Rick Welsh. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2008. ISBN # 978-0-262-12299-3. $25 paper

Frans Schryer, Farming in a Global Economy: A Case Study of Immigrant Farmers in Canada

Review of Farming in a Global Economy: A Case Study of Immigrant Farmers in Canada, by Frans Schrye

A Vision for the Northern Great Plains

This essay presents a number of positive alternatives for the future of the rural Northern Great Plains. A number of trends occurring in the 1990s are used to assemble this vision, such as sustainable agriculture, information technology, wireless communication, and small communities working together in mutual interest. This vision identifies the important role of social capital and social relationships as rising in value over a consumer oriented society. The strength of a positive vision exists in its ability to fire people to actively seek these ends, [ed.

The role of collaborative community supported agriculture: Lessons from Iowa

The project surveyed a variety of CSA collaborators and participants to determine whether CSAs could serve as business incubators for small-scale, rural enterprise in Iowa

The Measurement of Community Capitals through Research

Rural communities, in the United States and internationally, invest in their community resources in a number of diverse ways to achieve community economic development (CED). These investments yield diverse impacts and outputs. In 2003, the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development (NCRCRD) was contacted by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation to conduct a review of community and economic development (CED) efforts in rural communities with populations of less than 10,000 people. Together these organizations reviewed rural communities both domestically and abroad to see how external financial investments impact CED. The overriding purpose was to learn how the Foundation could make better use of limited funds to elicit positive outcomes for rural communities in West Virginia. Since rural communities in general have different kinds of assets, the Benedum Foundation and NCRCRD agreed the study should focus on ways these rural communities can use external financial investments to build upon social, cultural, human, political, economic, and environmental assets or capital to improve their overall well-being. Ultimately, the Benedum Foundation wanted to know how financial investments in rural communities could be maximized to bring about the greatest positive CED outcomes. Thus, all 57 communities reviewed in this study used external funding to engage in successful CED. The communities were located in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States; former British colonies were chosen so that the communities could be compared more easily. The methodology for our research involved the Community Capitals Framework and the measurement of community capitals (natural, human, social, cultural, political, financial, and built) throughout the CED process in each community. It is our belief that when strong consideration is given to how to invest well in a community’s capitals (assets) and when CED efforts are participatory and inclusive, CED proves to have greater, more far-reaching impacts on a community