Eclectic
panelists discuss ways to improve rural
Kentucky life
March 2004
People from very different walks of life shared ideas
on rural communities and economies March 4 and 5 at “Growing
Kentucky: New Directions for Our Culture of Land and Food.”
The symposium, sponsored by the University of Kentucky’s
College of Agriculture and Gaines Center for the Humanities, with
assistance from Partners for Family Farms.
“Nowhere else can you find such interesting
viewpoints to discuss rural life,” said Cindi Sullivan of
Louisville’s WHAS Radio and WAVE-TV,
who moderated the panel on rural communities.
The symposium was occasioned in part by the end of
the federal program of tobacco quotas and price supports, which
panelists agreed would be the largest change in Kentucky agriculture
since the program was established more than 65 years ago. Some
speakers said the end of the program, and the money that growers
will be paid for their quotas, create the best opportunity yet
to make realities of their dreams of a diversified agricultural
economy that supports local communities – some of which
have been very dependent on tobacco, a crop that kept many small
farms in business.
"If we want to have diversified agricultire, we must
have diversified ideas," LaJuana Wilcher, secretary of the state
Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet,
told the crowd at the opening session.
Some speakers expressed frustration that more has
not been done in the last decade, despite warnings about the decline
of tobacco and rural communities. The “right groups”
get together and talk but haven’t gotten much accomplished
because they want to protect their turf, said rural-economies
panelist Lois Mateus, senior vice president of Brown-Forman
Corp., major co-sponsor of the symposium. “Everyone
seems to have their own noble idea,” Mateus said. She added
that UK is best suited to lead change because it has “troops
in the field,” primarily the Cooperative Extension
Service, which has agents who work on community development
as well as agriculture, 4-H and family and consumer topics.
Mateus and Michael Childress, director of the Kentucky
Long-Term Policy Research Center, said the key to rural
economic development is a regional approach, in which groups of
counties use their existing strengths to build an economic niche.
One example of that is the houseboat industry that has developed
along Lake Cumberland, in the towns of Somerset, Monticello and
Albany, said Al Cross, interim director of the Institute
for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, who has lived
and worked in the towns.
Cross noted that the industry developed without much
government help, and Childress said regional cooperation faces
obstacles because Kentucky has many counties where judge-executives
and mayors fail to coordinate. He and others said a key to rural
economic development is local leadership. Mateus called for “more
imaginative action in Frankfort and Washington.”
Childress said the urgency for rural development is
increasing, noting that Kentucky’s 58 most rural counties
have become more dependent on transfer payments, which include
all forms of government benefits. Such payments accounted for
25 percent of the counties; income in 1990, and rose to 30 percent
by 2002, he said. That trend was a corollary to another troubling
trend in rural Kentucky, a widening wage gap with urban areas.
Childress said that trend continues to make rural people migrate
to urban areas.
Cross urged those at the economies session to seek
coverage and commentary from their local newspapers and broadcast
stations of the issues discussed at the conference, making them
relevant to local concerns. He and other speakers voiced concern
that the decline of rural economies is leading to a decline in
the sense of community in rural areas, as residents travel to
larger towns and regional centers for shopping and services.
Kentucky's internationally reknowned poet,
essayist and farmer, Wendell Berry attended both panels, which
began in the morning and were repeated in the afternoon. During
discussion in the afternoon panel on communities, he mentioned
the importance of keeping the wealth of the country in the country.
“We need to teach the country person how they can take back
their wealth,” said Berry. (He and Kentucky authors Davis
McCombs and Barbara Kingsolver read from their works at a Friday
evening session.)
Cross said in concluding the economies panel that
he hoped some of the tobacco growers who will be getting large
checks for their quotas will invest their money in their own communities.
David Wagoner, a farmer from Nicholas County on the
economies panel, said individuals hold they key to small-town
economies. Samuel Stokes of the National Park Service
said likewise during the communities panel, reminding attendees
that agricultural community is more than just land. “It’s
everything together that makes the rural community so special.
But especially, it’s the people in the community that make
it what it is,” said Stokes, who is chief of the park service's
Rivers, Trails and Conservation Program.
Wagoner is trying “community supported agriculture,”
in which community members sign pledges before the growing season
to buy certain shares of a local farm’s production, and
wants his farm to be both economically and ecologically sustainable.
“We do well to be economically sustainable,” he said.
Jess Miller, a UK student and Gaines Fellow on the
communities panel, said she is a member of Community Farm
Alliance and is committed to eating locally grown food.
Environmental lawyer Hank Graddy, of the Cumberland
Chapter of the Sierra Club, called for conservation
and preservation during the communities panel. “Growth is
both good and bad and it’s our job to determine the difference,”
he said. “We need growth that enhances the quality of life.”
Several attendees said the College of Agriculture,
which in the past has often been indetified with large farming
interests, broke new ground by co-sponsoring the symposium. Mike
Mullen, the college’s associate dean for academics, said
during the economies panel that the college is considering a sustainable-agriculture
curriculum and is moving 11 acres on its farm to “organic
and sustainable production.” College Dean Scott Smith said
in opening the conference that it was "critical to our planning
and our ability to serve the future of the commonwealth."
Other speakers included Michael Pollan,
author, environmentalist, and Knight Professor of Journalism at
the University of California at Berkeley; restaurateur
and chef Alice Waters, whose foundation supports
efforts to educate children about sustainable agriculture; and
Jon Carloftis – writer, Kentucky native,
environmental activist andgarden designer to
the stars.
The symposium concluded with the annual Phyllis
Pray Bober Memorial Feast, created by the undergraduate fellows
of the Gaines Center and presented by local chef Ouita Michael,
a former Gaines Fellow and James Beard Honoree, and the staff
of the Holly Hill Inn. Mike Seager, a prominent
expert on Appalachian music, will perform with music professor
Ron Pen, director of the John Jacob Niles
Center for American Music, and The Reel World
String Band.
For further information, contact Dan Rowland of
the Gaines Center for the Humanities at 859-257-1537 or hisdan@uky.edu;
Bonnie Tanner of the College of Agriculture at 859-257-3887 or
bonniet@uky.edu; or Sue Weant
of Partners for
Family Farms at 233-3056 or msdweant@aol.com.
Brittany Johnson of the Rural Journalism class
at UK contributed to this report.
