Rural development

“ Rural Development Program — As a dynamic answer to Communism and a positive boost to economic progress, the Administration launched a greatly expanded and bold program of social and economic development aimed at rural amelioration and at advancing industrial and agricultural productivity. ”

“ To improve the quality of life, the objectives of rural development should include: (i) local food security and basic service infrastructure for the population groups, including housing, sanitation, drinking water, rural storage, health and education; (ii) an increase in production and productivity and promotion of local and regional markets for agricultural, agro-industrial and non-industrial products and inputs; (iii) generation of jobs and income; (iv) sustained and sustainable use of the available natural resources, through management of resources at the local level. ”

“ Foster the social and economic organization of the rural population with particular emphasis on the development of small-scale farmers', fishers', and foresters' cooperatives, community organizations and development associations, so that rural inhabitants may be actively involved in decision-making, monitoring and evaluation of rural development programmes ”

“ Farms of a score to a few hundred acres, only part of which are cultivated, form rural communities among the hills or along a river valley. Here and there a few houses cluster in village or hamlet, where each house yard has its garden patch, but the inhabitants of the village depend on other means than agriculture for a living. On the farms dairy and poultry products share with agriculture in rural importance, and no one crop constitutes an agricultural staple. In New England the villages are comparatively near together, and social life needs only prodding to produce a healthy development. ”

“ Physical Types.—To understand the continually changing rural life of the present, it is necessary to examine into the physical characteristics of the country districts, the elements of the population, the functions of the rural community, and its social institutions.
The physical characteristics have a large part in determining occupations and in fashioning social life. A natural harbor, especially if it is at the mouth of a river, seems destined by nature for a centre of commerce, as the falls of a swift-flowing stream indicate the location of a manufacturing plant. ”

“ Third, we will intensify development of agricultural infrastructure and projects designed to improve the lives of rural people. We will develop land on a large scale and comprehensively improve farmland, water supplies, roads, and forests. ”

“ We will continue to improve rural infrastructure, including power grids, postal service, and telecommunications, and intensify development of rural social programs.
Fourth, we will increase rural incomes in a variety of ways. We will vigorously develop modern agriculture with distinctive local features, support intensive processing and sale of agricultural products, develop rural secondary and tertiary industries, accelerate the development of small towns, and strengthen county economies. ”

“ To promote the improvement of the economic, social and cultural situation of rural workers and farmers, the development of the rural world, the rationalisation of the structure of land ownership, the modernisation of the business fabric, and the access by those that work the land to ownership or possession of the land itself and of the other means of production that they directly employ thereon ”

“ With the breaking up of the old plantations there came a greater diversification of agriculture, which is going on at an accelerated pace, and social centres are increasing, but there is still much rural isolation. ”

“ To improve the life of our rural Americans and our farm population, we will plan for the future through the establishment of several new Community Development Districts, improved education through the use of Teacher Corps teams, better health measures, physical examinations, and adequate and available medical resources. ”

“ In fact, the great rural question for the twentieth century to determine, is whether there were not beneath the inconvenient and uneconomical methods of the common field system, a vital principle essential to true rural prosperity, which has to be re-discovered and re-established in forms suitable to the present environment. ”

“ The town and the country have their mutual economic duties by which their life must be controlled. All that we can hope to do is, on one hand, to ameliorate the hardness and solitude of country living, and, on the other, to bring the citizen into nearer relation with the invigorating fields and woods and boundless air of the country.
Devising no modern Sybaris, where all possible good of life may follow from the unaided operation of a perfect social and industrial organization, I propose to confine myself to the simple question of the best practical development of village life for farmers. ”

“ Not one college of forestry in all this great land up to 1898, and as yet but one in its infancy! Until the last generation not a single school of agriculture, scarcely a book obtainable which might give direct help to the rural American boy and girl! Therefore, the farmer should not be blamed for the wasteful and unscientific treatment of forest and field. All this leads to the conclusion that to secure a competence, lands of high and varied agricultural capabilities, lands worthy of an intelligent American, should be selected upon which to build and maintain rural homes. ”

“ For we cannot properly judge the significance and the relation of the different industrial activities of our farmers, and especially the value of the various social agencies for rural betterment, except by the standard of class status. It is here that we seem to find the only satisfactory philosophy of rural progress. ”

“ Compared with his predecessor of a century ago, the farmer of to-day is better fed, better clothed and housed, and better able to secure adequate education and recreation. At the same time the relatively greater advances which urban communities have made in economic and social activities render the improvement of rural life highly desirable. ”

“ The small farm unit, usually from five to twenty-five acres, brings neighbors close together, abolishing loneliness and most of the social ills of farm life in the East. Beautiful irrigated villages are springing up which rival in comfort and privilege most places on earth, and combine both city and country privileges, where rural and urban meet. The spirit of cooperation is strong in irrigated communities, enforced by the common dependence upon the common enterprise and water supply. ”

“ The new rural civilization, however, is by no means a mere matter of methods. The farmer himself has been growing more intelligent. County agricultural societies, first organized in 1810, set the farmers to thinking. Many farm journals have contributed widely to the farmers’ education. But in the past twenty years many agencies have united in what has been a great rural uplift. ”

“ We need above all things to produce such a rural condition as will satisfy the farmer to live permanently in the country rather than to move to town when the farm has given him a competence.
I am not to be understood as saying that farmers ought never to live in town. There will always be shifting both ways between town and country. In some cases, small-area farming develops around a village; or a village grows up because the farms are small and are intensively handled. In irrigation regions, the whole community may be practically a hamlet or village. ”

“ Are we not shown the vast importance of keeping our rural population away from towns? Do we not thus endeavour with every means in our power to improve the cultivation of our land? County Council lectures, flower shows, cottage-garden competitions, Nature-study courses, training colleges are provided for this purpose. But, perhaps, the surest way of all is to make our boys and girls fond of bee-keeping, fruit growing, gardening and all other industries of country life. ”

“ It was the rural way of life that shaped the county and his demands which needed to be met.
At first glance this farmer's life seems tempered by nature and largely self-contained. The daily routine was established by seasons and sunlight; fortunes were made or lost at the mercy of the wind and rain. A farm was not only the farmer's livelihood and workshop but his home. Thus, unlike the city worker whose occupation was entirely separate from home concerns, country life had a total integration. ”

“ To enumerate the achievements of the Grange would be to recall the progress of agriculture during the past third of a century. It has been a motor force in many helpful movements, and in many ways has organized and incorporated the best thought of the most intelligent farmers, about means for rural advancement. It has been an integral part of, and a most potent factor in, the expansion of American farm life. ”

“ In the solution of the farm problem we must deliberately invoke the influence of quickened means of communication, of co-operation among farmers, of various means of education, and possibly even of religious institutions, to stimulate and direct industrial activity. What needs present emphasis is the fact that there is a definite, real, social end to be held in view as the goal of rural endeavor. The highest possible social status for the farming class is that end. ”

“ However, farmers and ranchers do not live or work in isolation; the labor of many people, both rural and urban Americans, helps provide the agricultural products so vital to our health, our prosperity, and our quality of life. What connects farms and ranches with urban stores and consumers is a network of farmers, ranchers, agribusiness industries, scientists, inspectors, shippers, retail distributors, and others who work together to grow, process, and share the bounty of our great land. ”

“ And the importance of the effect of tenancy, or any other economic aspect of agriculture on the life of its people must be recognized as a fundamental consideration in determining rural policies. Well being on the land and not wealth from the land is the final goal of agriculture.
Community life is also affected by the type of farming which is prevalent among its people. Modern agriculture is becoming specialized, and the crops grown are determined both by soil and climate and by the markets available. ”

“ Having shown, in part, what a rural life has to offer to those who are trained to appreciate the beauties of nature and to obey her laws, and having shown that the average farmer always has an assured though modest income, and that the better farmers have an ample income for maintaining improved rural homes, the further discussion of how they may be made to minister to the natural longings for broader and more refined lives may be taken up. ”

“ Such themes might not only be expounded with profit to those who work their fellowmen, but should also be impressed betimes upon those who work the soil for the good of their fellowmen.
The Paramount Problem. The paramount problem, therefore, is to make the conditions of rural life desirable—to convert farming into an enjoyable vocation; to make farm life and its labors a business to be envied and not despised. The fact is, planning for beauty and comfort in the city has progressed far and away beyond the country. ”

“ The farmers are being welded into a more compact society. They are being nurtured to greater alertness of mind, to [Pg 22] greater keenness of observation, and the foundations are being laid for vastly enlarged social activities. The problem now is to extend these advantages to every rural community—in itself a task of huge proportions. ”

“ If we carefully study the significance of these things, we shall soon discover, that in reality those farms were practically, combined agricultural and manufacturing institutions, which were self-supporting and self-sustaining to such an extent, that farm people were the most independent on the face of the globe. As such, these small farm centers were potent factors, in swiftly advancing the permanent wealth and civilization of rural society. ”

“ Moreover, in a country where advanced farming is the rule, there is a remarkable, and, from the standpoint of national stability, most valuable, steadiness in employment. Good farming, by fixing the labourer on the soil, improves the general condition of rural life, by ridding the countryside of the worst of its present pests. ”

“ Naturally, the questions arise, are these large structures necessary, and what changes in agriculture have taken place to create a need for such mammoth structures? They are necessarily expensive, and too often dwarf and belittle the house when placed near it.
Modern advanced farmers secure nearly or quite double the average yield of crops of their grandfathers. This is an indisputable fact, notwithstanding the hue and cry about the decadence of the rural population. The facts are that some are farming much better than the older generations and some much worse. ”

“ The new rural civilization is bringing a new prosperity into the great business of farming. It is bringing new and permanent satisfactions and comforts into country homes. It has greatly diminished the vexed problem of rural isolation, with its many new ways of communication. It has to a remarkable degree eliminated drudgery, through the use of wonderful machinery. It has popularized education and developed a new social consciousness and new efficiency in rural institutions, amounting often to a total redirection of the community life. ”

“ A secondary effect has been to bring about a reorganization of agriculture in such a way as to improve the condition of the farmer. In several countries efforts have been made to break up the large estates and increase the number of small landowners. There has been a very general improvement in the character of the rural schools. The states of Europe, having discovered that their rural population is one of the most important of the natural resources, have begun to take practical measures to educate and improve the neglected masses. ”