THE OTHER
AMERICANS
recent analysis by Bill Bishop, a
long-time Texas-based journalist covering rural affairs and a coeditor of the web-based newspaper
The Daily Yonder.
Using data from the Economic
Research Service, Bishop found
that federal spending on cities outstripped rural spending every year
between 2004 and 2009. Per capita
spending on non-agricultural development—that is, on community
facilities, the environment, housing, regional development, transportation and Native American
programs—has been substantially
lower in rural areas in recent years.
“I think the Obama administration is the most metropolitanfocused administration in my lifetime,” Stauber told me, “and I’m
over 60 years old.”
Secretary Vilsack took great umbrage at that suggestion, noting that
President Obama signed an executive order last year that created the
very first White House Rural Council specifically to address the challenges facing rural communities.
“For the first time we actually
have a damn plan to build a rural
economy that will support middleclass families, and we don’t get
credit for it and don’t get recognition for it by anybody,” said Vil-
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sack, who heads up the year-old
council. “Pardon me for being
frustrated about this, but we’re
working our tails off here and you
know, this rural council doesn’t
get the recognition it deserves. For
someone to say [the President] is
urban-centric, it’s crazy.”
Stauber and other critics also
argue that government strategies
aimed at rural development have
traditionally focused too heavily on subsidizing farming, and
that this inevitably drives dollars into the pockets of big agriculture—a highly mechanized
affair that has slowly shed jobs
even as output has increased—at
the expense of real solutions for
America’s poorest citizens.
“I think the reality is, as long as
the dominant federal frame that
gets applied to rural development is
agriculture, then I think we’re actually forcing people to leave,” Stauber said. “If you want to look at
one of the great economic success
stories of the 20th century, it’s agriculture. You look at the yield per
unit of labor and the yield per unit
of capital, and it’s just remarkable.
“There’s nothing