{"id":268,"date":"2011-09-15T15:35:43","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T21:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=268"},"modified":"2011-11-23T10:00:53","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T17:00:53","slug":"the-slow-road-to-rural-job-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/09\/15\/the-slow-road-to-rural-job-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Slow Road to Rural Job Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Curtis Gregory Perry<\/p>

A pre-recession construction project south of Twin Falls<\/p><\/div>\n

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week announced<\/a> a new round of grants and loans from the agency’s rural development program.\u00a0 The funds are meant to spur rural job creation and business development.\u00a0 In Idaho, the one grantee is the Idaho Falls office of the Yellowstone Business Partnership<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Executive Director Jan Brown says they have big plans for their $49,500 allocation.\u00a0 They’ll hire two consultants to work with small businesses in rural counties of eastern Idaho.\u00a0 The aim is to help those businesses shift to more sustainable and, Brown says, money-saving practices.\u00a0 That would be things like\u00a0more efficient waste management, energy conservation and\u00a0water conservation.\u00a0 That, she says, could free up money for hiring.<\/p>\n

This is the slow road\u00a0to create jobs in rural Idaho and beyond. The New York Times detailed criticism<\/a> of this route to economic growth earlier this week.\u00a0 The basic complaint?\u00a0 For all of its funding and effort in rural areas, why doesn’t the Obama Administration have more to show?\u00a0 But on the flip-side, where would rural communities be without this spending?<\/p>\n

Economists like Lionel Beaulieu, the director of the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University, said financing for rural programs might have prevented even deeper levels of poverty and unemployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is,\u201d Mr. Beaulieu said, \u201cwe don\u2019t know how much worse it would have been if not for this funding.\u201d — The New York Times<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week announced a new round of grants and loans from the agency’s rural development program.\u00a0 The funds are meant to spur rural job creation and business development.\u00a0 In Idaho, the one grantee is the Idaho Falls office of the Yellowstone Business Partnership. Executive Director Jan Brown says they have big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[71],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2270,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/2270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}