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The development of local foods systems across the country should be applauded. Diverse economic opportunities for family farmers and ranchers that supply local food systems are worth pursuing. Providing high quality food with some character to our urban cousins also has merit. “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” campaigns and other local food initiatives also create economic opportunities for local merchants and restaurants.

However, I should be able to buy actual food from actual farmers from somewhere near where I live. I went to the grocery store here in Lyons the other day. The folks there are nice, the prices are not too bad, and there is more selection than one might expect.

But among my food purchases there was only one item – potatoes – that I could be reasonably confident had been produced in Nebraska. Theoretically, the pork might have come from Nebraska too, but there is just no way of being certain.

The reason my trip to the grocery store stood out in my mind is that it drove the point home, yet again, that much of the economic benefit from farming and ranching has been lost to farming and ranching communities.

Rural communities have lost too many grocery stores, butchers, locker plants, bakeries, breweries, and every other imaginable type of local food processing. The diminished commerce in food and the consequent loss of jobs, income, and quality of life are starkest, ironically, in the very places where much of our nation’s agricultural production occurs.

But there is hope. These last two summers I have had the great pleasure of buying vegetables at our local farmers market that were grown just outside Lyons by Lucy Alexander. Vintners like Tim Nissen of Hartington, Nebraska, are bringing grape growing and wine making to new places in rural America. And I can still buy some of the best beef and pork anywhere in locker plants in Bancroft, Nebraska, and Edgewood or Holy Cross, Iowa.

If Congress made a priority of investing in initiatives like the Farmers Market Promotion Program, Value Added Producer Grants, and the Rural Entrepreneurship and Microenterprise Assistance Program that have and could help rebuild rural food systems, then there would be a lot more people like Lucy and Tim in rural America. And rural Americans would have a lot better choices for spending their food dollar. That is another glimpse of what it would look like if rural really mattered.

Contact: John Crabtree, 402.687.2103 x 1010 or johnc@cfra.org, with comments or ideas on this continuing series. Send John your version of what it would look like if rural really mattered. You can leave your comments here as well.