Monday Mailing
Year 23 • Issue 34 05 June 2017 1. ‘Wild Olympics’ Proposal Harnesses Economic Power of Public Lands, Supporters Say 2. Oregon GMO Liability Bill Survives Legislature’s Deadline 3. 6 Reasons Local Food Systems Will Replace Our Industrial Model 4. Infographic: The Arts in Small and Rural Communities 5. America Has Become So Anti-Innovation – It's Economic Suicide 6. This Is Why Rural Infrastructure Is So Expensive 7. USDA is Seeking Applications for Grants to Support the Development of Rural Community Facilities 8. Podcast: Broadband for All — Part 1 9. Operator Survey Illuminates Barriers to Bike Share Equity 10. A Colorful Journey Through Cottonwood Canyon 11. Free Webinar: Local Food: The Secret Ingredient for Vibrant Downtowns - Wed, June 14, 2017 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM 1. ‘Wild Olympics’ Proposal Harnesses Economic Power of Public Lands, Supporters Say U. S. Representative Derek Kilmer is a native of his home district, raised by two educators in Port Angeles, Washington. The city of 19,000 is the largest along the 90-mile northern coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Kilmer speaks fondly of a childhood, “hiking the Hoh, paddling the sound.” The representative is a creature of his Northwest Washington district, most of which is characterized by rural and public land.
Quote of the Week: "The creation of a thousand forest is in one acorn." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Kilmer, who was first elected to Congress in 2012, believes that activities like these are one of the key economic engines for rural communities. “There’s a lot of money, a lot of income, in outdoor recreation.” To access the full story, click here.
Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon women had the right to vote eight years before it was the national law.
2. Oregon GMO Liability Bill Survives Legislature’s Deadline SALEM — Biotech patent holders would be legally responsible for losses caused by their genetically engineered crops in Oregon under a bill that’s survived a crucial legislative deadline. House Bill 2739 would allow landowners to sue biotech patent holders for the unwanted presence of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, on their land. The bill has now been referred to the House Rules Committee, which isn’t subject to an April 18 legislative deadline that recently killed other proposals. To access the full story, click here.
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3. 6 Reasons Local Food Systems Will Replace Our Industrial Model A local, community-based food system certainly is not a new idea. It’s simply an idea that is being reassessed in response to growing public concerns about the current global food system. When I was growing up in south Missouri in the 1940s and early 1950s, our family’s food system was essentially local. I would guess close to 90 percent of our food either came from our farm or was produced and processed within less than 50 miles of our home. There were local canneries, meat packers, and flour mills to supply grocery stores and restaurants with locally grown food products. Over the years, the local canneries, meat packers and flour mills were consolidated into the giant agribusiness operations that dominate today’s global food system. Supermarkets and fast-food chains replaced the mom-andpop grocery stores and restaurants. Today, I doubt there are many communities in the United States who get more than 10 percent of their foods from local sources, as official estimates put local foods at well less than 5 percent of total food sales. Estimates of the average distance that food travels from production to consumption within the United States range from 1200 to 1700 miles. More than 15 percent of the food sold in the United States is imported, with more than 50 percent of fruits and 20 percent of vegetables coming from other countries. More than 30 percent of U.S. farm income is derived from agricultural exports to other countries. The local food system of my childhood has been transformed into the global food system of today. Most of these changes took place during a 40-year period, between the late 1950s and the late 1990s. To access the full story, click here. 4. Infographic: The Arts in Small and Rural Communities The National Endowment for Arts has released a wonderful infographic speaking to the impact the arts has in small and rural communities. To access the infographic, click here. 5. America Has Become So Anti-Innovation – It's Economic Suicide If you’ve used the internet at any point in the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard of Juicero. Juicero is a San Francisco-based company that sells a $400 juicer. Here’s how it works: you plug in a pre-sold packet of diced fruits and vegetables, and the machine transforms it into juice. But it turns out you don’t actually need the machine to make the juice. On 19 April, Bloomberg News reported that you can squeeze the packets by hand and get the same result. It’s even faster. The internet erupted in laughter. Juicero made the perfect punchline: a celebrated startup that had received a fawning profile from the New York Times and $120m in funding from blue-chip VCs such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures was selling an expensive way to automate something you could do faster for free. It was, in any meaningful sense of the word, a scam. And it tickled social media’s insatiable schadenfreude for rich people getting swindled – not unlike the spectacle of wealthy millennials fleeing the cheese sandwiches and feral dogs of the Fyre festival. To access the full story, click here. 6. This Is Why Rural Infrastructure Is So Expensive A few weeks ago I finished the book Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care is Wrong by David Goldhill. In 400 pages he shed more light for me on our health care system than the hundreds of hours I've spent informing myself about health care policy. In fact, the Page 2 of 5
book was so illuminating, after reading it I felt dumb for having previously wasted so much time. If nothing in our health care conversation today makes sense to you and you wish it did, you have to read this book. One of Goldhill's key devices is to place the language and values of the health care industry on a metaphorical island. He constantly talks about life "on the island" and "on the mainland." For example, on the island, nobody ever talks about prices, they only talk about costs. This is not a subtle nuance. Prices, of course, are related to costs but, in a true competitive marketplace -- one where people, not a third party, actually pay directly for the goods and services they consume -- we never talk in terms of costs. Only prices. To access the full story, click here. 7. USDA is Seeking Applications for Grants to Support the Development of Rural Community Facilities The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development is seeking applications for technical assistance and training grants to support the development of essential community facilities in rural areas. The grants will be provided through USDA's Community Facilities Technical Assistance and Training Grant Program. Congress authorized this new program in the 2014 Farm Bill to help rural communities develop their applications for USDA Community Facilities loans and grants, which help underserved rural communities develop essential services that in turn help attract investments, create and retain jobs and businesses, and help residents remain in their communities. Technical assistance providers can use the grants to assist communities with identifying and planning for long-term community facilities needs, to identify resources to finance community facilities, to conduct feasibility studies, to prepare applications for financial assistance, to hire or expand the services of specialized personnel, and, to a limited extent, to retain consultants. Public bodies, nonprofits, and federally recognized tribes are eligible to apply. The maximum grant amount available is $150,000. For more information, click here. 8. Podcast: Broadband for All — Part 1 Kate Meis, Executive Director of the Local Government Commission joins Infinite Earth Radio to speak about the importance of broadband coverage to rural communities and why this is so vitally important to the economic futures of rural communities in Episode 73: Broadband for All — Part 1. To access this podcast, click here. 9. Operator Survey Illuminates Barriers to Bike Share Equity While bike-sharing systems become increasingly common in American cities, questions about the equity of such systems are making their way to the forefront of the conversation. Bike share can provide a cheap and healthy means of transportation, but many systems are not serving the lower-income and minority populations who, arguably, could benefit most from having the additional travel option. A survey of 56 bike share system operators in the United States offers an overview of how these equity concerns are being addressed.
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The survey is part of a larger research effort, Evaluating Efforts to Improve the Equity of Bike Share Systems. To gain an understanding of the challenges and opportunities involved in providing more equitable bike share, TREC and NITC teamed up with the Better Bike Share Partnership: a collaboration between PeopleForBikes, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), the City of Philadelphia, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, and other local partners. To access the full story, click here. 10. A Colorful Journey Through Cottonwood Canyon A faint mist drifted through Cottonwood Canyon as I hit the trailhead on a warm day in May. The forecast had called for sun - something I wanted for a full experience of Oregon's newest state park but the clouds didn't get the memo. About two miles along the dirt and rocky trail, everything changed. Streaks of blue sky emerged from the gray, and the blazing sun wasn't far behind. The grayscale canyon suddenly transformed into a rainbow of color: deep blue hues on the John Day River, dark reds of the canyon walls, a golden brown blanket of high desert steppe, and the otherworldly green of fresh spring sagebrush. Hundreds of butterflies emerged with the sun, dancing and fluttering across the trail. Crickets came out too, chirping a cheerful symphony. Cliff swallows sang with them, as they dived in and out of their mud-pellet nests, built into the high nooks and crannies above. To access the full story, click here. 11. Free Webinar: Local Food: The Secret Ingredient for Vibrant Downtowns – Wed, June 14, 2017 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Whether you are a foodie or a farmer, local food is something to embrace. In small towns, the local food movement is doing more than putting meals on plates—it is nourishing economies by keeping farms vital and downtowns alive. Join the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design® for a free hour-long webinar on how farmers’ markets and food co-ops are addressing their local community needs while stimulating downtown development. Speakers: - Stephanie Bertaina, senior policy analyst, US EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities Stephanie provides technical expertise and assistance to communities across the country that are seeking to build vibrant, healthy and sustainable neighborhoods and downtowns. She partners with rural communities and small towns as they tackle challenges related to local food systems, health care, broadband access and disaster resilience. Stephanie co-leads the Local Foods, Local Places program, a multiagency federal initiative that has helped more than 80 cities and towns across the country leverage local food to support local economies and to create walkable, healthy communities. - Kelly Verel, vice president, Project for Public Spaces (PPS) Kelly Verel is a specialist in the fields of local food and public markets, a career that began in 2003, as an apprentice farmer on an organic farm in Massachusetts. From there, Kelly used her skills and experience to promote Greenmarket, one of the country's largest networks of farmers markets. For the last 10 years, she has managed all projects at PPS related to the development of public markets. Additionally, Kelly has focused on helping to make local food accessible to all through the Page 4 of 5
development of policies, tools and strategies to expand the customer base of our country's public markets. - Jason Moore, president, Montana Food Co-op Montana Co-op’s mission is to connect consumers and producers to create easy access to local, nutritious and affordable food along with Montana-made products while promoting a sustainable, nurturing and thriving community. In 2014, Jason spearheaded the renovation of a vacant building in downtown Polson, Montana, to establish the Co-op as a community center. Programs at the Co-op include a Kids Co-op and coordination with Tech4Good, an initiative to use technology to promote food sustainability on the Flathead Indian Reservation. - Fran Stoddard, communications consultant, Orton Family Foundation Fran will serve as moderator for this event. A national award-winning producer of video programs, Fran produced and hosted Vermont Public Television’s weekly “Profile” interview program for more than a decade. She frequently serves as moderator for community events and has served on numerous non-profit boards including the Hunger Free Vermont, the Vermont Journalism Trust, Vermont Mozart Festival, Burlington City Arts, Vermont International Film Foundation and Vermont Public Radio. To register for this webinar, click here.
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