Governor’s Rural Community Summit
I just spent Tuesday & Wednesday at the Governor’s Rural Community Summit in Bismarck. It was a good 2 days listening to the US Secretary of Agriculture, Ed Schafer(pictured); Gov. John Hoeven, Lt Governor Jack Dalrymple, 2 authors: Jack Schultz & Jim Ditto, Rural Development Under Secretary Thomas Dorr & several networking sessions. Dorr stated ” Due to Internet, we can live locally & compete globally”.
A few interesting quotes from Ed Schafer were “This year Agricultural exports are 109 billion dollars”. “ND exports 50% of the overseas export products.” “Agriculture is the only positive balance in trade.”
In our breakaway sessions each community gave suggestions or told what problems their community has. Most communities, other than those in the oil producing communities, were wanting to attract new families. Several communities stressed that a clean, quality community is necessary to attract new people. Each community should have a goal-build their own brand. Yogi Berra stated” If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up someplace else”. There are 1,440 minutes in a day, of which we sleep about 600, so we don’t want to waste any of them. You don’t want to have any CAVE people in your community-Citizens Against Virtually Everything, as a positive self image is necessary.
I came home motivated to continue on with the programs that we started under the Horizons program.