Blog Posts & Stories

Across rural America, small businesses are the heart of main street. From local coffee shops to the hardware store, these businesses employ local residents, provide important services to the community, and serve as anchors for their local economies.

My husband and I reside about five miles outside of McCool Junction, Nebraska, a town of about 300 residents, and, for years, have struggled with broadband access. We have been in the category of Nebraskans who didn’t have an internet subscription.

By addressing key issues in food, farm, small business, and community-level and institutional policy, there is potential to identify strengths, changes needed, and gaps in the food system. Good food...

Across the nation, farmers, ranchers, rural communities, and state leaders are finding that a key component to building a brighter future for rural America lies beneath our feet. By investing in soil health, states are creating more resilient food systems in the face of increasingly frequent extreme weather, reducing pollution and runoff in rivers and streams, and providing a long-term anchor for many rural economies.

Commercial property assessed clean energy, or C-PACE, is a financing tool that creates opportunities for businesses and nonprofits to make clean energy improvements to their properties. Adopting this...

In 2017, 18 percent of Minnesota’s energy needs were met by wind energy, with 3,699 megawatts installed across the state. Nearly every wind turbine contributes tax revenue to the local community where it operates, with the contributions of installed wind energy capacity totaling $12.7 million across 27 counties in 2018.

Today, a vast amount of land in the U.S. is owned by those over 65 years old. Some have made their wishes clear for the future of their property. Others are courting family upheaval by not planning in concrete ways.

The Nebraska Legislature has the opportunity to put rural communities on a level playing field with the state’s metro areas. LB 549, introduced this session, would make important investments in broadband service mapping across the state.

Nick Bergin is a big believer in superheroes. As a child, he lost himself in the fantasies written of those possessing powers beyond this world. Today, he searches for new kinds of superpowers—those...

Grocery stores are a staple on rural main streets across the country. They provide fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, staple food items, and even cleaning supplies, toiletries, and over-the-counter...

Gladys Godinez seeks out opportunities, and constantly strives to make a difference with her work—which has led to her receiving the Special Recognition Award for “outstanding vital contribution to...

From Omaha to the Panhandle, broadband access impacts every Nebraskan. From training a 21st century workforce to growing small business investment and supporting the state’s agricultural producers, our connection to broadband Internet has become a defining factor of our quality of life.

Nebraskans spend $4.4 billion on food annually, but only 10 percent of that money is spent on food grown in the state, according to a new report from the Center for Rural Affairs and the Nebraska Food Council.

Farmers are used to adjusting for weather, but some are adjusting for climate change by planting a variety of crops, sowing cover crops and leaving land unplowed.

Before moving back to the family farm outside Juniata, in Adams County, my husband and I lived in rural southwest Iowa.

The clothing industry has been calling to Evelyn Vasquez since she was 18 years old. So, when the right opportunity presented itself, she seized the moment, and has spent the last five years growing and building her business to meet the needs of customers and the community.

The majority of people in the Omaha Nation express a desire for greater local access to fresh produce, according to a report released by the Center for Rural Affairs and the Omaha Nation community....

Climate change can be difficult to fully wrap your mind around. My fear is that more people will engage only after facing a crisis themselves—losing a home due to flooding, markets upended by multi-year droughts, water shortages, etc.

You may have heard that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) now functions under the purview of the Agricultural Marketing Service, but that’s not all.

Though he’s only been farming for around 10 years, agriculture is in Eric Thalken’s blood. Originally from Ogallala, Nebraska, Eric spent part of his childhood in The Cornhusker State, and part of it in The Keystone State—Pennsylvania.