An Iowa Perspective for Enhancing Rural Development and Vitality in the 2007 Farm Bill

The WTO decisions and evolving farm bill context appear to generate some opportunities for designing incremental and new policy mechanisms that would add to the incomes of farmers and rural people without further eroding the competitiveness of U.S. farmers by capitalizing direct payments directly into land values. Payment reform and diversification strategies could be designed to make an enhanced contribution to jobs, income, and economic growth rates in the Ag-dependent counties that have experienced slower jobs and income growth. Such criteria could be an important element in "red state/blue state" analyses by political scientists. Given the growing dependence of farmers on off-farm income and concerns about brain drain migration, development of community and regional approaches to stimulating new ventures by building community entrepreneurial capacity, identifying actionable migration strategies, and creating community mechanisms to attract local reinvestment of wealth transfer are likely to become increasingly important attributes in creating future opportunities for income, economic growth, and quality of life in rural America.