I’m excited about some things coming from the new USDA leadership, in particular this 3rd of 6 points that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack explained recently. Development in this area would go a long way to improving rural life: bringing greater respect to the farmer, making rural life more culturally and intellectually stimulating, and so on.
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Third, link local farm production to local consumption. Investments in local
processing and storage facilities will allow for large scale consumers (e.g. schools,
hospitals, small colleges) in rural communities to buy locally produced goods
from smaller scale operations. These new and niche markets will leverage the
wealth generated from the land, create jobs and repopulate rural communities.
This relates to USDA's Know
Your Farmer, Know Your Food program -- an initiative that should decentralize and therefore increase the
security and health of the agricultural economy, as well as strengthen links between consumers and
farmers!
This program is offering cost-share dollars to build hoop houses to help grow vegetable in small scale farming operations in hopes to decentralize and build local food systems. I just signed Round River Farm up for a new hoop-house yesterday with the USDA in Duluth MN. We'll see if we get the money, but this is the first time I have ever been offered a subsidy from the US government in the 20 years of farming!!!
Posted by: David Abazs | February 05, 2010 at 12:53 PM