inluminent

I read about the new Rural Broadband Coalition (RBC) today, and it looks pretty cool. I was an agriculture major in college, and I always thought it was sad how far behind the rural community was behind the rest of the world (yes, I grew up in a small Texas town before college). Throughout history the US government has subsidized agrigulture and the development of rural communities and a lot of my ‘more educated’ friends have always asked ‘why?’ in conversations that we’ve had about open markets and economics.

I’ve always understood that while some countries may have a advantage in production of things like silicon chips due to low labor costs, just as they may have an advantage in growing agricultural products, the fact remains that one industry the US can’t lose to foreign competitors is its agricultural industry. It’s one of those ’strategic’ industries like steel that without, we can’t guarantee the support of our own needs and demands as a world power. (without rice and beef, we can’t feed our troops during wartime for example)

So, anyways, that’s kind of off topic, but it’s nice to see things like the RBC working to create more incentives to keep our youth in the agriculture field:

January 30th, 2003 - The USDA Rural Utilities Service has released regulations for the:

RURAL BROADBAND ACCESS LOANS AND LOAN GUARANTEES PROGRAM

For FY 2003, $1.455 billion will be made available for loans and loan guarantees for the construction, improvement, and acquisition of facilities and equipment for broadband service in eligible rural communities.

I like that, personally. Hopefully it’ll keep kids in the field instead of creating too many falsely propped up businesses in the rural markets that it should serve.