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Tom Campbell: Our rural areas are suffering. What will help?

Eighty of North Carolina’s 100 counties are considered rural -- the population density is less than 250 people per square mile. Our state has the second-largest rural population of any, just behind Texas. When many of us think rural, we immediately think agriculture. There are some 50,000 farms in our state, most of them small.I’d ask why a company would not want to be in a region so wonderful. This produced the recitation of rural problems, as true today as it was then. Despite conscientious efforts, rural areas still don’t have major road networks. Although we just approved the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, many will still be unable to afford costly hookups for needed natural gas. Twenty of our counties have no pediatrician and three have no primary care doctors. Drugs, especially opioids, meth and alcohol, are more serious problems in rural areas. Education outcomes are not on par with more prosperous urban neighbors; neither are cultural amenities. The lack of good jobs has forced people to migrate to find work. One-third of our counties have lost population in recent years. Additionally, too many rural areas have no high-speed Internet available.We know the problems but haven’t found enough feasible solutions to them. There is some good news, however. We are seeing 30-somethings moving back. Retirees, especially where adequate healthcare is available, are finding rural North Carolina a haven. Some communities are employing innovative solutions and, even though tobacco is no longer king, our agribusiness community is growing (pun intended), new crops and using new technologies.

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Star News Online
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