C-FARE’s Brandt Forum Caps Two-Day Meeting of Economists, Administrators
Experts, administrators and Hill staffers gathered to hear discussion of rural housing, health care delivery, services and infrastructure challenges
About 60 people — some agency administrators, Hill staffers and agricultural economists — turned out for the 2019 Jon Brandt Public Policy Forum, entitled Approaches for Bolstering Rural America’s Future: A Spotlight on Infrastructure, Entrepreneurship and Rural Health. The event was sponsored and coordinated by the Council on Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics (C-FARE).
The panel discussion took place inside the House of Representatives’ Agriculture Committee hearing room Oct. 29. It was moderated by Tim Marema from the Daily Yonder. He was joined at the table by the following experts:
Joy Moten-Thomas, assistant administrator for community development and outreach for the cooperative extension at Fort Valley State University;
Corianne Scally, principal research associate for the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
Alison Davis, professor of agricultural economics and director of the Community and Economic Development Initiative of Kentucky at the University of Kentucky; and
Roberto Gallardo, assistant director of the Purdue Center for Regional Development and a Purdue Extension Community & Regional Economics Specialist.
The discussion ranged from the shifting business models (and closure) of rural hospitals, university Extension offices’ efforts, housing in small communities and rural broadband internet.
Asked to explain the trend of shuttering rural hospitals, Prof. Alison Davis, director of the Community and Economic Development Initiative of Kentucky, said in her state 37 of the roughly 130 hospitals are at risk, according to a survey of hospitals’ financial health, and it’s because of “a combination of many factors.”
“Some of it is payment system. Some of it is declining population. Some of it is poor management. Many of our [rural] hospitals are run by city- and county-appointed individuals who don’t know anything about running a hospital. … But currently, it is largely around how hospitals are compensated for care. It treats a rural resident like an urban resident would treat a hospital, and it’s just not the same utilization.”
“It’s really frustrating to see how mostly everybody applies an urban lens when they’re analyzing rural,” Dr. Roberto Gallardo of the Purdue Center for Regional Development said, speaking specifically about another rural services deficit, broadband internet. “I don’t know what the answer is necessarily, but we need to stop using urban-centric criteria or assumptions applied to rural communities. That will not get us very far.”
A video of the Brandt Forum, along with past webinars, was produced and is available for viewing on C-FARE’s YouTube channel.
The event capped a two-day trip to the nation’s capital by agricultural economists representing about 20 land-grant universities around the country. These experts visited congressional offices and conducted a biennial meeting of the National Agricultural and Economics Administrators.
C-FARE’s mission is to highlight current economic research relevant to agriculture, food, resources and, broadly, rural life. It is a nonprofit sustained through memberships, and the annual Brandt Forum in Washington showcases the agricultural and applied economics profession and those who compose it.
