Theme Overview: Higher Education's Roles in Supporting a Rural Renaissance

Abstract

A century ago, when one spoke of rural America, one was also speaking simultaneously about agriculture. The two terms were synonyms. Hundreds of thousands of small farms and ranches dotted the landscape. And almost all of the countless small and rural communities scattered across America existed mainly to provide goods and services to the multitudes of nearby farm and ranch families. Today, agriculture is no longer the mainstay of the rural economy. The initial response of some is to lament this reality, but they typically change their minds and perspectives when it is pointed out there are many places around the globe where agriculture and rural remain synonymous, meaning agriculture is the linchpin of the rural economy. Such places are far too common in third-world countries where thousands of impoverished villages exist solely to provide goods and services to subsistence farmers. Although efforts are underway across the nation that may enhance the role of agriculture in the rural economy through the establishment of local and regional community food systems that are more sustainable than the current industrial model, agriculture will most likely never return to the dominant position it once held. We are in a different world, with new opportunities and possibilities as well as challenges for rural people and the institutions that have obligations and missions to engage with them. This includes land-grant universities and their extension office and experiment stations. The research and extension functions of the nation’s land-grant universities were instrumental contributors to the process of transforming American agriculture by unlocking the full potential of its natural resource base. But as many critics have noted this process brought with it some troubling economic, environmental, and civic consequences. What if these same land-grant universities and other higher education institutions leveraged their human and intellectual resources to help transform rural America by unlocking the civic agency and full potential of its people and places? This issue of Choices is designed to stimulate and inform deliberations around this extremely important question.