Rural

A partnership between the Food Bank of Central Louisiana and the Rapides Parish School Board is proving to be bountiful in knowledge and food for students involved in pilot programs at Mabel Brasher Elementary School and Phoenix Academic Magnet School. Staff members of the Food Bank’s Good Food Project sustainable gardening program have been teaching students at the two schools about gardening and nutrition. [node:read-more:link]

While some alarmists predict artificial intelligence will decimate the workforce, there is an alternative. Concerted action by leaders in labor, business, government and education can ensure we take advantage of technological gains without replacing workers with robots. Rural communities, with overall declining employment, have a big stake in the issue.While some alarmists predict artificial intelligence will decimate the workforce, there is an alternative. [node:read-more:link]

Humphreys County, Mississippi, has the highest rate of federal income-tax audits of any county in the U.S. In a baffling twist of logic, that's because it's also one of the poorest counties in the country. [node:read-more:link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Department and  the Department of Health and Human Services are partnering to create addiction recovery transitional housing in rural communities.The grant is targeted to create homes for people struggling with opioid addictions. Nonprofit organizations will be able to purchase homes from the USDA and convert them to transitional housing for people recovering from opioid misuse. [node:read-more:link]

Rural Alabama will soon have a new dedicated specialist to lead the charge on economic development. The Alabama Department of Commerce is gearing up to name a rural development manager in its Business Development Division to help rural communities and counties better prepare for projects.The division includes 10 other staff members, two of whom focus on attracting investments from Europe and Asia.   [node:read-more:link]

Vermont veterinarians are hoping to formalize an unofficial sales and use tax exemption that has been applied to some veterinary supplies for 50 years.Veterinarians and their patients support the exemptions, which have been in place since 1969 relating to some human medical supplies and to some animals used in agriculture. Over the years, the exemptions came to be applied to a wide range of veterinary supplies used on all animals, companion or otherwise. [node:read-more:link]

More than 400 nutria have been captured in the first year of an effort to eradicate the invasive South American rodent from California.The state Department of Fish and Wildlife said Monday the semi-aquatic rodents were trapped in five counties in the San Joaquin Valley.Nutria are an agricultural pest, destroy wetlands critical to native wildlife and threaten water delivery and flood control infrastructure through destructive burrowing.Nutria were imported in the early 1900s for the fur trade, but the market collapsed and the rodents escaped or were released. [node:read-more:link]

With mismanagement and aging infrastructure, the Army Corps’ flood-control strategy on the Missouri amounts to yelling “look out below” to the folks downstream. For farmers in the path of the record-setting wall of water, the results are predictable – and catastrophic.But apparently, even with all the combined knowledge of the National Weather Service and Army Corps of Engineers, and with all the lakes and dams and levees built in the last 70 to 90 years, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t prevent floods from happening again. [node:read-more:link]

Rural America has 4% fewer jobs today than it did before the 2007 recession. Meanwhile, the bigger the city, the higher the rate of employment growth. Rural America has yet to recover the jobs it lost in the recession that began in 2007, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.The nation’s cities, suburbs and exurbs all had more jobs in 2018 than they did in 2007, before the economic collapse that sent the world economy into depression. The nation’s rural counties, however, had 780,000 fewer jobs in 2018 than they did in 2007. [node:read-more:link]

Communities worried about opioid and other substance abuse received two significant pieces of great news this month: one involves free money and the other involves free telehealth technology. The Distance Learning and Telemedicine program, initiated several years ago, is comprised of two funding steams – traditional DLT projects and opioid-specific projects.The traditional DLT fund helps rural communities use telecommunications to connect to each other and to the world. Projects may address opioid treatment but are not required to. [node:read-more:link]