Rural area

Uh, I think we had a very good relationship with Ja- Janet Hughes.

We've got a very good relationship with Mike Rowe, um, on the Farming and Countryside program.

Uh, I think ministerially it's been really hard because of the change, and I think actually we're quite positive about the fact that Angela Eagle's come back in because at least she's had a year, um, as farming minister, so she's got some idea of what's going on.

Uh, you know, Stephen Morgan coming back in.

But like, let me out here, you know, out and about with the folks.

But so anyway, a big thing was a couple weeks ago, I think it was on a Thursday or Friday, a Rural Life Mass.

We've been doing that, an annual one every year.

And so this one was just east or south of Waterloo, Peter Falls area.

That doesn't exist.

you know the government and even our strategic partners are intrigued to say huh there's something different here this could fundamentally change the national security element of for the united states that catches certainly the government's attention generally but the other piece was we said but let's invest in the rural communities and the usda has a number of initiatives to help our world communities not just our farmers but farmers and their families and their communities and so The work this morning, Secretary Rollins was on stage with me.

We announced our Pivot Pathways, Pivotal Pathways program, which is the investment not just in Trump accounts for our employees' children, but typically a farmer customer of ours.

It would be 1 to 5,000 acres for the customer.

You just got to have a social security number where that money goes.

And my belief is, look, we should do it for our employees, but we should do that for our customers.

And the thing that is exciting there is when you think about we need to invest as a private sector in innovation and in entrepreneurship and rural communities.

If you invest $1,000 a year when the kid's born to 18, they have 45 grand due to compound interest of some of those early investments, 45,000 in the account by 18.

Now, on the second day of the UBCM convention, electoral area directors gathered to discuss some of the unique challenges facing rural and regional communities across British Columbia.

They also heard directly from two provincial representatives, the Honourable Brittany Anderson, Minister of State for Local Governments and Rural Communities, and Steve Morcetti, Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Development.

Both spoke directly to electoral area directors about the province's approach to working with local governments and the importance of working alongside communities across every region and regional district in British Columbia.

Minister Anderson told the crowd that the province was continuing to work on issues that mattered to communities across British Columbia, including those affecting rural and regional districts.

And so in my role, we've been working on the Local Government Awareness Project and the Rural Initiative.

So with the Local Government Awareness Project, that is an internal project, and that is so the bureaucracy across government is being trained to understand how to better serve rural communities.

That means engaging with local governments earlier, more often.

We're really trying to get away from a ministry.

And I take it that is how they support us the ordinary citizens and everyone else that is in the business ecosystem.

But I would like us to take a look at the people in the rural areas.

I think most of the times they remain outside the formal financial services.

Is there any delivery policy to bring them along to also access financial services?

You know, for a long time now, people who have invested in banks and banking institutions have, for one reason or the other, ignored the rural areas.

Maybe because it's costly to set up a bank there versus the amount of business that they can have from there.

But from a public policy perspective, everybody deserves to be in the financial system.

But I think it has come out and the efforts that the bank is making.

US agriculture and the communities it supports are threatened by increases in temperatures, drought, heavy precipitation events, and wildfire on rangelands.

Figure 1.10, Chapter 10, Ag and Rural, Key Messages 1 and 2.

Case Study, Groundwater Depletion in the Ogallala Aquifer Region.

Chapter 23, South Great Plains, Key Message 1.

Case Study, The Edwards Aquifer.

Yields of major U.S. crops, such as corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, and cotton, are expected to decline over this century as a consequence of increases in temperatures and possibly changes in water availability and disease and pest outbreaks.

Chapter 10, Ag and Rural, Key Message 1.

Increases in growing season temperatures in the Midwest are projected to be the largest contributing factor to declines in U.S. agricultural productivity.

yeah, he's pointing at his watch right now.

So with that, we'll come back and speak with Deacon Nicholas Elliott, co-coordinator of Rural Life Ministry in the Archdiocese about the Rural Life Mass.

Stick around, we'll be back right after this.

You're listening to the Catholic

The Catholic Morning Show on Iowa Catholic Radio.

Ask anyone in America what Iowa is synonymous with.

And of course, the rural life, our farms, our ability to feed America.

So much of what Iowan identity rests on is precisely that service we provide for the country and the world.

I want to ask about one of your areas of expertise, Nick Herbert.

This campaign, the Campaign for the Countryside, which was launched in the House of Lords yesterday.

David Cameron, former Prime Minister, was there.

He was joined by the former Labour Home Secretary, Lord Blunkett, who called for a rural reset.

And if you're an urban dweller all your life and you've got treasury economic orthodoxy in your soul, you won't understand that family farms are only family because they're passed down from one generation to another.

And whilst it might have been a few people in numerical terms, it touched a button, it touched a nerve.

So, Nick, you're chair of the Countryside Alliance as well.

It makes an interesting political point as well as, you know, you and I had these conversations when you were the opposition spokesman pre-coalition going on for 15, 20 years ago.