Golden LEAF Critical Conversations: Partnerships for Rural Economic Growth

Gentlemen, b- before we talk about recruiting a particular company, let's start with the broader foundation for economic growth.

Robert, what are the different type of investments USDA Rural Development makes that ultimately help create an environment where businesses can grow and communities can attract new investment?

Thanks for the question, Scott.

If I could level set real quick and give your audience an idea of the past 10 years of USDA Rural Development in our great state of North Carolina.

And I'm loathe to use large numbers, but it is a large number, and it is what it is.

Since 2016 to this morning actually, USDA Rural Development has partnered with and worked with communities to the tune of $16 billion, uh, over 10 years.

So that comes to about 1.6 billion on average, and that's, that will be captured in a lot of different places.

Community facilities, that's a nefarious word, but that's, comes in the form of town halls, police stations, emergency services, facilities, fire stations, and then all the associated equipment that goes along with that.

Fire trucks, ambulances, just generally what we call rolling stock.

Communication equipment, viper systems that go into these rural communities so they can communicate with the county on the west side, on the west end of our state, so they know what's going on out there.

We also spend a lot of time in the wastewater and the clean water space to prepare for growth.

If you don't have clean water, you don't have a whole lot of anything, honestly.

Additionally, telecommunications is very prevalent in what we do in the form of broadband.

We have some great partners across the state to put broadband up to get that last mile.

And as we all know, that last mile is the most expensive mile, and that's also where our most rural residents live in the country, and they need to get broadband, and we have the ability to get the, get it to them.

Additionally, in the housing space, North Carolina maintains the largest housing dossier in the United States.

That would be single-family and multi-family.

So you think your single-family home sitting out by itself, and then you think of multi-family of, of doors between two and 10, and that's housing everything from our low-income residents also to the migrant community that's coming in, especially working in our farms out in rural North Carolina, which is so very important to us.

Additionally, we are in the charter school business.

And of the total budget at USDA Rural Development, across the United States, North Carolina accounts for 30% of that budget.

So we build 30% of the schools in the United States using rural development, and that's a, a very important thing for our rural kids to be able to get that elective different type of education.

So we don't go into a community and say, "Here, we're gonna put a school at the corner of Maple and Second." The community has to come to us and ask for it.

But those are just a few places where we seem to find a lot of business and a lot of need with our rural constituency and our neighbors.